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AN ARTIST'S LETTERS 
FROM JAPAN 



X 




THE GREAT STATUE OF BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA- 



AN ARTIST'S LETTERS 
FROM JAPAN 



BY 



JOHN LA FARGE 




'#^**S>^t^»«^ 



NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

189; 



AK 



l\hr\%'b t 



\ 



Copyright, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1897, 
By The Century Co. 



The DeVinne Press. 



To Henry Adams, Esq. 

My Dear Adams: Without you I should not have 
seen the place, without you I should not have seen the 
things of which these notes are impressions. If anything 
worth repeating has been said by me in these letters, it 
has probably come from you, or has been suggested by 
being with you — perhaps even in the way of contradic- 
tion. And you may be amused by the lighter talk of the 
artist that merely describes appearances, or covers them 
with a tissue of dreams. And you alone will know how 
much has been withheld that might have been indiscreetly 
said. 

If only we had found Nirvana — but he was right who 
warned us that we were late in this season of the world. 

J. L. F. 




WHICH IN ENGLISH MEANS: 



And you too, Okakura San : I wish to put your 
name before these notes, written at the time when I first 
met you, because the memories of your talks are con- 
nected with my Hking of your country and of its story, 
and because for a time you were Japan to me. I hope, 
too, that some thoughts of yours will be detected in what 
I write, as a stream runs through grass — hidden, per- 
haps, but always there. We are separated by many 
things besides distance, but you know that the blossoms 
scattered by the waters of the torrent shall meet at its 
end. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

An Artist's Letters from Japan i 

From Tokio to Nikko 29 

The Shrines of Iyeyasu and Iyemitsu in the Holy 

Mountain of Nikko 52 

Iyemitsu 85 

Tao : The Way 99 

Japanese Architecture 119 

Bric-a-Brac 128 

Sketching 159 

Nirvana 175 

Sketching. — The Flutes of Iyeyasu 185 

Sketching. — The Pagoda in Rain 193 

From Nikko to Kamakura 

Nikko to Yokohama 202 

Yokohama — Kamakura 2j6_ 

Kioto 230 

A Japanese Day.— From Kioto to Gifu 253 

From Kambara to Miyanoshita — A Letter from a Kago 265 

Postscript 280 

Appendix . 281 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The great Statue of Buddha at Kamakura. Frontispiece. 

The Kuruma 5 

Castle, and Moat with Lotus 9 

At the Well 11 

Ancient , 15 

No Dancer with Mask, representing the Sake Imp . 19 

Modern 23 

The Lake in Uyeno Park 28 

A Torii 32 

Our Runner 36 

In the great Avenue of Cryptomeria 39 

Nikko-san 43 

The Waterfall in our Garden 47 

Portrait-statue of Iyeyasu in ceremonial Dress . . 53 

Avenue to Temple of Iyeyasu 55 

Sketch of Statue of Iyeyasu Tokugawa 57 

Stable of sacred Horses 61 

Sacred Font , 65 

Young Priest 68 

Details of Bases of Cloister Walls, inner Court . 71 

Detail of Cloister Walls, inner Court 75 

Lintel, Bracket Capital ij 

Inside the " Cat Gate "— Gate to the Tomb ... 79 

Tomb of IvEYAStj, Tokugawa 83 

Looking down on the Water-tank, or sacred Font, 

from the second Gate 87 

A Priest at Iyemitsu .... 88 

In the third Gate of the Temple of Iyemitsu, look- 
ing TOWARD THE FOURTH 9I 

xiii 



PAGE 

A Priest at Ivemitsij 93 

KUVVANON, BY OKIO . , 94 

Entrance to the Tomb of Iyemitsu 96 

Painting by Chin-nan-pin 135 

Signature of Hokusai , . . 149 

Inscription on old Lacquer 152 

Inscription from Ho-riu-ji o . . 155 

Bed of the Dayagawa, Nikko 161 

Mountains in Fog before our House 165 

Portrait of a Priest 169 

Old Pagoda near the Priests' Houses 171 

Statue of Oya Jizo . 177 

Peasant Girls and Mountain Horses of Nikko . . . 181 

Our Landlord the Buddhist Priest 187 

Kioto in Fog— Morning 231 

Peasant Woman — Thresher 239 

A Pilgrim , 247 

FUSI-YAMA FROM KAMBARA BEACH 257 

Fishing with Cormorants 261 

Peasant carrying Fodder, and Bull carrying Load . 267 
A Runner in the Rain 275 



AN ARTIST'S LETTERS 
FROM JAPAN 



AN ARTIST'S LETTERS 
FROM JAPAiN 



Yokohama, July 3, 1886. 

ARRIVED yesterday. On the cover of the letter which 
L I mailed from our steamer I had but time to write : 
'' We are coming in ; it is Hke the picture books. Any- 
thing that I can add will only be a filling in of detail." 

We were in the great bay when I came up on deck in 
the early morning. The sea was smooth like the bril- 
liant blank paper of the prints ; a vast surface of water 
reflecting the light of the sky as if it were thicker air. 
Far-off streaks of blue light, hke finest washes of the 
brush, determined distances. Beyond, in a white haze, 
the square white sails spotted the white horizon and 
floated above it. 

The slackened beat of the engine made a great noise 
in the quiet waters. Distant high hills of foggy green 
marked the new land ; nearer us, junks of the shapes you 
know, in violet transparency of shadow, and five or six 
war-ships and steamers, red and black, or white, looking 
barbarous and out of place, but still as if they were part 
of us ; and spread all around us a fleet of small boats, 
manned by rowers standing in robes flapping about 
them, or tucked in above their waists. There were 
so many that the crowd looked blue and white — 



the color of their dresses repeating the sky in prose. 
Still, the larger part were mostly naked, and their legs 
and arms and backs made a great novelty to our eyes, 
accustomed to nothing but our ship, and the enormous 
space, empty of life, which had surrounded us for days. 
The muscles of the boatmen stood out sharply on their 
small frames. They had almost all — at least those who 
were young — fine wrists and dehcate hands, and a hand- 
some setting of the neck. The foot looked broad, with 
toes very square. They were excitedly waiting to help 
in the coaling and unloading, and soon we saw them begin 




to work, carrying great loads with much good-humored 
chattering. Around us played the smallest boats with 
rowers standing up and sculling. Then the market-boat 
came rushing to us, its standing rowers bending and ris- 
ing, their thighs rounding and insteps sharpening, what 
small garments they had fluttering like scarfs, so that our 
fair missionaries turned their backs to the sight. 

Two boys struggling at the great sculls in one of the 
small boats were called by us out of the crowd, and car- 
ried us off to look at the outgoing steamer, which takes 
our mail, and which added its own confusion and its at- 



! tendant crowd of boats to all the animation on the water. 
I Delicious and curious moment, this first sense of being 
! free from the big prison of the ship ; of the pleasure of 
directing one's own course ; of not understanding a word 
of what one hears, and yet of getting at a meaning 
through every sense ; of being close to the top of the 
waves on which we dance, instead of looking down upon 
them from the tall ship's sides ; of seeing the small limbs 
of the boys burning yellow in the sun, and noticing how 
they recall the dolls of their own country in the expres- 
sion of their eyes ; how every little detail of the boat is 
different, and yet so curiously the same ; and return to 
the first sensation of feeling while lying flat on the bot- 
tom of the boat, at the level of our faces the tossing sky- 
blue water dotted with innumerable orange copies of the 
sun. Then subtle influences of odor, the sense of some- 
thing very foreign, of the presence of another race, came 
up with the smell of the boat. 

We climbed up the side of the big steamer and found 
the Doctor there, who told us that he had been expect- 
ing us for a whole month ; so that he soon took posses- 
sion of us, and we found ourselves in the hotel launch, 
and at the wharf, and passing the custom house and its 
officers, who let everything go through quickly except 
my suspicious water-color blocks. Outside of the gate, 
in the street, we found the long-expected jinrikishay an 
arrangement that you know probably as well as I do — 
a two-wheeled perambulator or gig, very small, with a 
hood that is usually lowered, and with a man in the shafts. 
Our fellows were in blue-black clothes, a big inscription 
on their backs ; and they wore apron-like vests, close-fit- 
ting trousers, and broad straw hats poised on their heads. 
But you know all about these ; and I have only to add 
that we were trundled off to our hotel, along the pretty 
quay which edges that part of the town, past European 

3 



houses, unlike ours, and having a certain character which 
will probably appear very commonplace later, because it 
is not beautiful, but which is novel yet to us. Our hotel 
is also on the quay, just at a corner where a canal breaks 
in, and where we can see big walls and trees on the other 
side. Our rooms open on the water — that same blue 
water spangled with sunshine and fading into sky. There 
are men-of-war and steamers far out; picturesque junks 
sailing past rapidly, flattened out into mere edges of 
shadow and light against the sea and the sky, their great 
hollow sterns with the rudder far inboard, and sails which 
are open at the seams. Not far from us was a little sharp- 




pointed boat with a man fishing, his big round hat as im- 
portant as any part of the boat. It was already late in 
the day. European children were out with their Japan- 
ese nurses ; from time to time a phaeton or a curricle 
passed with European occupants, and even in this tremen- 
dous heat ladies rode out on horseback. But the human 
beings are not the novelty, not even the Japanese ; what 
is absorbingly new is the light, its whiteness, its silvery 
milkiness. We have come into it as through an open door 
after fourteen gray days of the Pacific which ended only 
at sunrise this very morning. And we looked again at 
all the light outside, from the dining-room, where we 
lunched, where the waiters slipped about in black clothes 

4 



like those of the runners, and where we were joined at 
table by a foreign gentleman with high cheek-bones, yel- 
low face, and slanting eyes, and dressed in the latest 
European fashion with high collar, four-in-hand scarf, and 
pointed shoes. He was very courteous, and managed 
what little English he used as skilfully as he dresses. 
And he gave me a touch of the far East in the story of 
his being here ; for he is under a cloud, an amiable exile 
whose return to his native land might involve his being 
boiled in oil, or other ingenious form of death. For well 
as he figured at luncheon with us, I hear that he has been 
obliged to leave because of his having poisoned too many 
of his guests one day at table, — former enemies of his, — 
and because of his having despatched with the sword those 
whose digestion had resisted his efforts at conciliation. 
However this may be, his extradition is demanded; to 
which he objects, invoking Western ideas of civilization, 
and protesting that his excesses have been merely politi- 
cal. Then, late in the afternoon, we sauntered out into the 
Japanese quarter — walking, so that we might mingle with 
the gray, black, and blue crowd, and respectfully followed 
by our jinrikisha men, who slowly dragged our carriages 
behind them, like grooms following their masters. We 
stopped at little curio shops and bargained over miserable 
odds and ends, calling up, I feel sure, the unexpressed 
contempt of the Doctor, the great collector of precious 
lacquers ; but it is so amusing to see things as they are, 
and not as they should be. We went into a show which 
had an enormous draped sign outside, and where, in un- 
certain darkness, an old, miserable, distorted dwarf played 
the part of a spider in a web, to the accompaniment of 
fiendish music and the declamation of the showman. 
Then we lingered outside of a booth in which a wrestling 
match was going on, but did not enter, and we saw the 
big wrestlers go in or come out, their shoulders far above 

7 



the heads of a smaller race of men, and we turned at 
every moment to look at the children, many of whom are 
so pretty, and who seem to have an easy time of it. Men 
carry them in their arms as women do with us, and many 
a little elder sister walks about with the infant of the fam- 
ily slung behind her maternal shoulders. And then there 
are curious combinations of Western and Eastern dress — 
rarely successful. Our hats and shoes and umbrellas 
— all made here, are used, and our ugly shirts stiffen out 
the folds of the soft Japanese robes; but the multitude 
wear their usual dress and make no abuse of hats. 

Wearied by the novelty, every detail of which, however, 
was known to us before, we walked back in the white, 
milky sunset, which was like a brilHant twilight. 

July 5. 
We made our first visit to town yesterday; that is ,to 
say, we went to Tokio, which is about twenty miles off. 
Of course we took owx jinrikishas at the door of the hotel, 
and passing through the wide Yokohama streets, saw the 
semi-European houses, some with high garden walls in 
which are small doors : there are sidewalks, too, and Eu- 
ropean shops, and Colonial buildings, post-office, and tele- 
graph office ; and the Japanese kura, or storehouses — 
heavy tile-roofed buildings with black and white earthen 
surfaces, the black polished to a glaze, as was done with 
Greek and Etruscan vases. They have deep windows or 
doors, recessed like our safes, with a great air of solidity, 
which contrasts with that temporary wooden structure, 
the usual Japanese house. I came near saying that the 
little railway station is like ours ; but it is better than 
most of ours, with neat arrangements. We entered the 
little cars ; I noticed, in the third class, Japanese curled 
up on the seats. The grade is as level as a table, the 
landscape is lovely, and we saw the shapes we know so 

8 




CASTLE, AND MOAT WITH LOTUS. 



well in the prints — the curious shapes of the Japanese 
pines ; little temples on the hillside ; and rice-fields with 
their network of causeways, occasionally a horse or a 
peasant threading them. The land is cultivated like a 
garden, the lotus leaves fill the ditches, and one or two 
pink flowers are just out. From time to time we saw 
stretches of blue sea. And once, for an instant, as I 
looked up into the hazy, clouded sky, far beyond the 
hills, that were lost in the mist into which the rice-field 
stretched, I saw a pale, clear blue opening in which was 
an outline more distinct, something very pure, the edge 
of a mountain, looking as if it belonged to another world 
than the dewy moist one in which we are — the cone of 
Fusi-yama. 



On passing through the station, very much like the 
other with its various arrangements for comfort and or- 
der, — first-, second-, and third-class rooms, and so forth, 

9 



— we met a crowd o{ Jinrikis has with, their runners, or, as 
my friends tell me to call them, kuruma and kururnayay 
every man clamoring for patronage in the usual way of 
the hackman. 

We selected as a leader Chojiro, who speaks English 

— a little ; is a traveled man, having gone as far as Con- 
stantinople ; wears the old-fashioned queue, flattened for- 
ward over the top of his shaven head ; and whose naked 
feet were to run through the day over newly-macadam- 
ized roads, for which a horse would need to be well shod. 
A little way from us, on the square, stood the car of the 
tramway, which runs as far as Asakusa, to the great 
popular temples of protecting divinities, Kuwanon and 
Jizo, — and Benten, from whose shrine flowed one day 
copper coins as if from a fountain, — where Buddhist 
sermons are preached daily ; which are full of innumer- 
able images, pictures, and ex-votos ; and where prayer- 
wheels, duly turned, helped the worshiper to be free 
from annoying sins, or to obtain his desires. 

How shall I describe our ride through the enormous 
city ? We were going far across it to call on Professor 

F , the great authority on Japanese art, and to be 

delighted and instructed by him through some fragments 
of his collection. 

In the first street where the tramway runs there are 
semi-European fa9ades to houses, and in their pilasters 
the Ionic capital has at length made the circle of the 
world. Then we took more Oriental and narrower streets, 
through the quarter of the gei-shUy^^ dancers and sing- 
ers who go out perpetually to put a finishing touch on 
entertainments. At such early hours they are of course 
unseen. Where houses seemed more closed than usual 
servants were attending to household duties, and we heard 
the occasional strum of a guitar. Then great streets 
again, with innumerable low houses, the usual shops, Hke 




AT THE WELL. 



open sheds, with swinging signs carved, painted, and 
gilded, or with draperies of black cloth marked with 
white characters. Merchants sat on their mats among 
the crowded goods, girls at corners drew water from the 
wells ; in a narrower street the black streak of a file of 
bulls peacefully dragging merchandise ; where the crowd 
was thickest a black-lacquered palanquin, all' closed, in 
which was shut some obstinate adherent to ancient fash- 
ions. Then bridges and canals, and great empty spaces, 
long white walls with black copings, and buildings that 
continued the walls, with gratings like those of barracks. 
These were the yashikis — inclosed residences of princes 
who were formerly obliged to spend part of the year at the 
seat of government with small armies of retainers. Then 
the walls of the castle, great sloping ramparts of irregular 
blocks of masonry, about which stand strangely twisted 
pine-trees, while the great moats of clouded water are 
almost filled with the big leaves of the lotus. Now and 
then great gates of gray wood and enormous doors. On 
some of the wide avenues we met cavalry officers in Eu- 
ropean costume, correct in style, most of the younger 
with straggling mustaches, long and thin, whence their 
nickname of "horn-pouts," naturally connected with that 
of the *' cats," devourers of fish, as the gei-sha are called. 
Near official buildings we saw a great deal of black frock- 
coats, and trousers, and spectacles. Everything was seen 
at a full run, our runners dragging us at horse's pace. 
Still it was long before we reached our destination. 
Streets succeeded streets, empty or full, in desolate Ori- 
enal wearisomeness. At length we stopped at a little 
gate in a plank fence, and entered a vast high space, form- 
erly a prince's park, at one end of which we saw trees 
and hills, and we came to the Professor's house, a little 
European structure. My mind is yet too confused with 
many impressions to tell you of what we saw that after- 

^3 



noon and evening, and what was said ; all the more that 
the few beautiful paintings we looked at out of the great 
collection lifted me away from to-day into an indefinite 
great past. I dislike to use analogies, but before these 
ancient religious paintings of Buddhist divinities, symboli- 
cal of the elements or of protective powers, whose worn 
surfaces contained marvels of passionate delicacy and care 
framed in noble lines, I could not help the recall of what 
I had once felt at the first sight of old Italian art. 

We passed from this sense of exalted peace to plunge 
again into the crowded streets at night. It was late ; we 
had many miles to go to catch the last train ; two addi- 
tional runners had been engaged for each kuruma — one 
to push, one to be harnessed in front. 

Then began a furious ride. Mine was the last carriage. 
We were whirled along with warning cries of '' Hai-hai ! " 
now into the dark, then into some opening lighted by star- 
light, in which I could see the flitting shapes of the other 
runners and of my companions. I remember the creak- 
ing of their carriages, the jerking of them with each pull 
of the men ; then our crossing suddenly other parties 
hghted by lanterns like ourselves, the lights flaring upon 
yellow faces and dark dresses and black hair; then our 
turning some narrow corner and plunging at full speed 
into lighted streets crowded with people, through whom 
we seemed to cut our way. Much shouting of our men, 
and dodging of wayfarers with lanterns and of bystanders 
who merely turn enough to let us glide by. Then one 
of my runners at full gallop struck a post and was left 
behind ; another was gathered in somehow without a stop, 
and we tore through the city, still more crowded as we 
came nearer to our end — the railway station. We were 
in time, and we slept in the now familiar train. We reached 
the deserted station and were jogged peacefully to our 

14 




M/ 



hotel ; our men, in Japanese fashion, sleepily turning out 
of the way of the ownerless dogs that lay in the middle 
of the streets. And when I awoke in the morning I 
found that the day's impressions had faded in sleep to 
what I tell you. 

July 6. 
I have been asking myself whether it would be possible 
to have sensations as novel, to feel as perfectly fresh, things 
I knew almost all about beforehand, had we come in any 
other way, or arrived from any other quarter. As it is, 
all this Japan is sudden. We have last been living at 
home, are shut up in a ship, as if boxed in with our own 
civiHzation, and then suddenly, with no transition, we are 
landed in another. And under what splendor of light, in 
what contrasting atmosphere ! It is as if the sky, in its 
variations, were the great subject of the drama we are 
looking at, or at least its great chorus. The beauty of 
the light and of the air is what I should like to describe, 
but it is almost like trying to account for one's own mood 

— like describing the key in which one plays. And yet 
I have not begun to paint, and I dread the moment of 
beginning to work again. Rather have I felt like yield- 
ing entirely to the spirit in which I came, the intention 
of a rest, of a bath for the brain in some water absolutely 

alien. A and I had undertaken that we should bring 

no books, read no books, but come as innocently as we 
could ; the only compromise my keeping a scientific 
Japanese grammar, which, being ancient and unpractical, 
might be allowed, for it would leave me as unready as on 
the day I left. 

The Doctor took us on Sunday afternoon to his club 

— whose name I think means the perfume of the maple 

— to see and to listen to some Japanese plays which are 
given in the club theater built for the purpose. We went 

17 



there in the afternoon, passing by the Shiba temples, and 
our kurumas were drawn up at one end of the buildings. 
There everything was Japanese, though I hear stories of 
the other club and its ultra-European ways — brandies- 
and-sodas, single eyeglasses, etc. However that may be, 
on this side we were in Japan without mistake. We sat 
on the steps and had our shoes taken off, according to the 
Japanese fashion, so as not to injure mats, and we could 
hear during the operation long wailings, high notes, and 
the piercing sound of flutes and stringed instruments ; 
the curiously sad rhythm mingled with a background of 
high, distinct declamation. We walked in with careful 
attention to make no noise, forgetting that in our stock- 
ing-feet we could have made none had we wished, and 
we found the Doctor's place reserved for him and us, and 
marked with his name, written large. Other low boxes, 
with sides no higher than our elbows as we sat on the 
mats, divided the sloping floor down to the stage. The 
stage was a pretty little building projecting into the great 
hall from its long side. It had its own roof, and connect- 
ed with a long gallery or bridge, along which the actors 
moved, as they came on or disappeared, in a manner new 
to us, but which gave a certain natural sequence and 
made a beginning and an end, — a dramatic introduction 
and conclusion, — and added greatly to the picture when 
the magnificent dresses of stiff brocade dragged slowly 
along to the cadence of the music. The boxes were mostly 
occupied, and by a distinguished-looking audience ; the 
Noy as this operatic acting is called, being a refined, clas- 
sical drama, and looked upon differently from the more 
or less disreputable theater. Hence the large proportion 
of ladies, to whom the theater is forbidden. Hence, also, 
owing to its antiquity and the character of its style, a 
difficulty of comprehension for the general public that 
explained the repeated rustle of the books of the opera 




NO DANCER WITH MASK, REPRESENTING THE SAK]fe IMP. 



which most of the women held, whose leaves turned over 
at the same moment, just as ours used to do at home 
when we were favored by French tragedy. 

A quiet, sleepy appreciation hovered over the scene ; 
even the devotees near us, many of them older people 
and belonging to the old regime, showing their approval 
or disapproval with restrained criticism. I could see with- 
out turning my head the expression of the face of my 
neighbor, a former daimio, a man of position ; his face a 
Japanese translation of the universal well-known aristo- 
cratic type — immovable, fatigued, with the drooping un- 
der lip. Behind him sat former retainers, I suppose — 
deferential, insinuating remarks and judgments, to which 
he assented with inimitable brevity. Still, I thought that 
I could distinguish, when he showed that the youthful 
amateurs — for most of the actors were non-professional 
— did not come up to a proper standard, that his memory 
went back to a long experience of good acting. And so 
catching are the impressions of a crowd that I myself after 
a time believed that I recognized, more or less distinctly, 
the tyro and the master, even though I only vaguely un- 
derstood what it was all about. For I need not tell you 
that the libretto would have been still more difficult for 
me than the pantomime before me ; and very often it was 
but pantomime, the actor making gestures to the accom- 
paniment of music, or of the declaration of the choragus, 
who told the poetic story. Occasionally these movements 
amounted to a dance, that is to say, to rhythmic move- 
ments — hence called the No dance — to which emphasis 
was given by rising and falling on either foot, and bring- 
ing down the sole with a sudden blow. 

There were many short plays, mostly based on legen- 
dary subjects, distinguished by gorgeous dresses, and oc- 
casionally some comic scenes of domestic hfe. The mon- 
otony of impression was too novel to me to become wear- 



isome, and I sat for several hours through this succession 
of separate stories, patient, except for the new difficulty 
of sitting cross-legged on the mats. Moreover, we had 
tobacco to cheer us. On our arrival the noiseless ser- 
vants had brought to us the inevitable little tray contain- 
ing the fire-box with hot charcoal and the little cylinder 
for ashes, and tea and little sugary balls ; and then, be- 
sides, notwithstanding the high-toned repose of the audi- 
ence, there was enough to watch. There were the en- 
voys from Loo Choo, seated far off in the dim light of the 
room, dressed in ancient costumes, their hair skewered 
up on the top of the head with a double pin — grave and 
dignified personages ; and a European prince, a Napole- 
onic pretender, seated alongside, with his suite, and our- 
selves, the only foreigners. The types of the older people 
were full of interest, as one felt them formed under other 
ideas than those of to-day. And though there were no 
beauties, there were much refinement and sweetness in 
the faces of the women, set off by the simplicity of their 
dresses, of blacks, and browns, and grays, and dull violets, 
in exquisite fabrics, for we were in an atmosphere of good 
breeding. And I watched one of the young ladies in 
front of me, the elder of two sisters, as she attended to 
every little want of her father, and even to his inconveni- 
ences. And now it was time to leave, though the per- 
formance was still going on, for we wished to return in 
the early evening. Our shoes were put on again at the 
steps, our umbrellas handed to us — for sun and rain we 
must always have one — and we passed the Shiba temples 
and took the train back for Yokohama. 

July 12. 
We are doing nothing in particular, hesitating very 
much as to what our course shall be. One thing is 
certain — the breaking out of the cholera will affect all 

22 



our plans. Even the consequent closing of the theaters 
shows us how many things will be cut off from us. We 
spend much time in such idleness as bric-a-brac, letting 
ourselves go, and taking things as they come. 

The Doctor's kindness is with us all the time. One 
feels the citizen of the world that he is when he touches 
little details of manners here, now as famiUar-to him as 
those of Europe. 

I enjoy, myself, this drifting, though A is not so 

well pleased, and I try to feel as if the heat and the nov- 
elty of impressions justified me in idleness. Once only I 
was tempted to duty, however, when we went to the tem- 
ples of Shiba and Uyeno, where are the tombs of the 
shoguns, rulers of Japan of the Tokugawa line. They 
are all there but the two greatest, lyeyasil and lyemitsu, 
who lie at Nikko, the sacred place, a hundred miles away. 
Here in Tokio are the tombs of the others, and the tem- 
ples about them splendid with lacquer and carving and 
gold and bronze, and set among trees and gardens on 
these hills of the Shiba and Uyeno, 

My dreams of making an analysis and memoranda of 
these architectural treasures of Japan were started, as 
many resolutions of work are, by the talk of my compan- 
ion, his analysis of the theme of their architecture, and 
my feeling a sort of desire to rival him on a ground for 
fair competition. But I do not think that I could grasp 
a subject in such a clear and dispassionate and masterly 
way, with such natural reference to the past and its im- 
plied comparisons, for A 's historic sense amounts to 

poetry, and his deductions and remarks always set my 
mind sailing into new channels. 

But I must put this off — certainly for to-day — while 
we discuss whether we shall make our visit to ancient 
Kamakura and the great bronze statue and the island of 
Enoshima, or whether to put it off until our return from 

25 



Nikko, and our seeing the other shrines of the shoguns 
there. The Doctor, who has just left Nikko, tells us of 
its beauty in the early summer, a few weeks ago, and I 
feel all the hotter as he talks of the cold mountain streams 
which run by his house and of banks of azaleas covering 
the high rocks. And then the Japanese proverb says, 
" Who has not seen Nikko cannot say beautiful." 



26 



FROM TOKIO TO NIKKO 

July 20, 1886. 

THE cholera was upon us, and we decided to go to 
Nikko and spend a month there, near the F s'. 

The Doctor, who was anxious to get back to its coolness 
and its other charms, was to pilot us and instruct us by 
the way, and much of the miscellaneous information that 
I shall give you has come more or less from him. Late 
in the morning we rode to Tokio, and lunched in Uyeno 
Park, looking down on the great pond and the little tem- 
ple which stands in it, and which you know, having seen 
them on the fans and colored prints. They were veiled 
in the haze of the sunlight, as if in a spring or winter 
mist, and through this fog of light shone the multitu- 
dinous little sparkles of the ribs and swellings of the 
lotus-pads lapping one over another, and reaching to far 
streaks of clearer water. A denser Hghtness here and 
there marked the places of the flowers, and a faint odor 
came up in lazy whiffs. The roof of the temple seemed 
to be supported by the moisture below. Above there 
was no cloud. All things lay alike in the blaze, envel- 
oped in a white gHmmer of heat and wet, and between 
the branches of the trees around us the sky was veiled in 
blue. The locusts hissed with a crackling sound like that 
of heated wood. The ugly bronze Buddha at the corner 
of the tea-house shone as if melting in the sun. Then 
came the moment of leaving for the station, where, owing 
to delays of trains, we waited still longer in the heat. In 
the cleanly waiting-room we looked at the illustrations in 

29 



the Japanese newspapers, and at the last report of the 
weather bureau, printed in EngHsh and fastened to the 
wall ; or we read a little in that morning's edition of the 
excellent Yokohama English paper ; all these comforts of 
civilization being supplied by the Road. At length the 
noise of hundreds of wooden clogs, worn by men, women, 
and children, clattered upon the stones outside and an- 
nounced an end to waiting. The tightly-closed train had 
been baking in the sun all day, and we leaned out of the 
doors on the sides and gasped for breath. 

Our train skirted the great hill of Uyeno, and its dark 
shadow, which did not quite reach us. Monuments and 
gravestones, gray or mossy, blurred here and there the 
green wall of trees. The Doctor told us of the cooler 
spring-time, when the cherry-trees of Uyeno cover the 
ground with a snow of blossoms, and the whole world 
turns out to enjoy them, as we do the first snows of 
winter. 

But this is a lame comparison. The Japanese sensitive- 
ness to the beauties of the outside world is something 
much more delicate and complex and contemplative, and 
at the same time more natural, than ours has ever been. 
Outside of Arcadia, I know of no other land whose people 
hang verses on the trees in honor of their beauty; where 
families travel far before the dawn to see the first light 
touch the new buds. Where else do the newspapers an- 
nounce the spring openings of the blossoms ? Where 
else would be possible the charming absurdity of the story 
that W was telling me of having seen in cherry-blos- 
som time some old gentleman, with capacious sake gourd 
in hand and big roll of paper in his girdle, seat himself 
below the blossom-showers, and look, and drink, and 
write verses, all by himself, with no gallery to help him ? 
If there is convention in a tradition half obligatory ; and 
if we, Western lovers of the tree, do not quite like the 

30 



Japanese refinement of growing the cherry merely for its 
flowers, yet how deliciously upside-down from us, and 
how charming is the love of nature at the foundation of 
the custom ! 

From the rustHng of leaves and reechoing of trees we 
passed into the open country, and into free air and heat. 
In the blur of hot air, trembling beneath the sun, lay 
plantations and rice-fields ; the latter, vast sheets of 
water dotted with innumerable spikes of green. Little 
paths raised above them made a network of irregular 
geometry. Occasionally a crane spread a shining wing 
and sank again. In the outside ditches stood up the 
pink heads of the lotus above the crowded pads. At 
long intervals small groups of peasants, men and women, 
dressed in blue and white, knee-deep in the water, bent 
their backs at the task of weeding. The skirts of their 
dresses were caught up in their girdles, and their arms 
were freed from their looped-back sleeves. 

The Doctor spoke to us of the supposed unhealthiness 
of rice-planting, which makes life in the rice- fields short, 
in a country where life is not long. 

We are told that the manuring of the rice-fields taints 
all the waters for great distances, and we are warned not 
to drink, without inquiring, even from the clearest streams. 
Not even high up in the mountains shall we be safe ; for 
there may be flat spaces and table-lands of culture which 
drain into the picturesque wildness below. We learn 
that with all these hardships the rice-growers themselves 
cannot always afford this staple food of the country, for 
cheaper than rice are millet, and buckwheat, and the 
plants and fungi that grow without culture. 

Contrasting with the tillage we were passing, islands 
of close foliage stood up in the dry plain, or were re- 
flected, with the clouds above, in the mirror of the wet 
rice-fields. Occasionally a shrine was visible within, and 

31 




the obligatory Torii stood at the edge of the grove, or 
within its first hmits. 

Looking through a Torii one is sure to be in the di- 
rection of something sacred, whether it be temple or 
shrine or holy mountain. Neither 
closeness nor distance interferes with 
this ideal intention, and the sacred 
Fusi-yama is often seen a hundred 
miles away in the sky, framed by 
these lines, built for the purpose. 
This assemblage of four Hnes of stone ^ torh. 

or wood or bronze is to me one of the creations of art, 
like the obelisk or the pyramid. Most impressive, most 
original of symbolic entrances, whether derived from 
sacred India or from the ancestral innocence of Poly- 
nesia, there is something of the beginning of man, some- 
thing invented while he lived with the birds, in this ele- 
mentary porch, whose upper line, repeating the slope of 
hill and wave, first embodied the curve that curls all 
upper edges in the buildings of the farther East. 

And if, indeed, the Torii ^ be nothing but the first 
bird-perch, then I can imagine the father of all peacocks 
spreading his gigantic fan across its bars ; or I may pre- 
fer to suppose it the rest for the disk of the sun-god, 
whose lower curve is repeated by the Torii's upper beam. 

Sometimes there were traces of inclosure about these 
woods; sometimes they had no edgings but their own 
beautifully-modeled contours. Long ages, respectful 
care, sometimes fortunate neglect, have made of these 
reserved spaces types of an ideal wildness, for these are 
sacred groves, and they are protected by the divine con- 
tained within them. 

This preservation of a recall of primeval nature, this 

1 The usual etymology of Torii is bird-perch ; from Tort, a bird. 

32 



exemption of the soil from labor, within anxious and 
careful tillage, is a note of Japan constantly recurring, 
and a source of perpetual charm. 

Notwithstanding the men and women working in the 
fields, there was a certain desolateness in the landscape, 

and A made out its reason more easily than I, and 

recalled that for miles and miles we had traveled without 
seeing any of the four-footed beasts which the Western 
mind always associates with pastoral life and labor. 

As the evening came on we crossed a large river and 
looked down from the height of the new bridges upon 
the discarded ferry-boats, and upon the shape of a more 
fantastic one that was never meant to sail — a pine-tree, 
shaped and trimmed, which spread its green mast and 
sails in a garden by the water. Far away were lines of 
mountains and the peaks of extinct volcanoes. 

At every station now the country people gathered to 
stare at the novelty of the train ; we saw the lighting up 
of the farm-houses as we passed ; in the dooryards, be- 
hind high hedges reminding me of Normandy, bonfires 
were being made to keep off mosquitoes : then temples 
and shrines with lights before them, and at eight o'clock 
on a festal night w^e came into Utsunomiya. 

The streets were full of people carrying lanterns ; chil- 
dren ran about together, with little toy shrines, and the 
whole town was drowned in noise. We got into a basha, 
a sort of omnibus, attached to two wild horses, and were 
hurled through the crowded streets, much as if carrying 
the mails, with apparent disregard of the lives and limbs 
of the inhabitants. 

The hotel, where we were expected and where the Doc- 
tor had represented us as distinguished visitors, opened its 
whole front, in a Japanese way, to receive us, for there was 
no outside wall to the lower floor. We were driven quite 
into the house, and beheld an entire household drawn 
3 33 



up in line on the platform, which occupied a full half of 
this lower space. The Doctor did all that was right, while 
we remained in amused embarrassment before our pros- 
trated host and the kneeling attendants. As we sat help- 
less on the steps of the platform our shoes were taken off, 
and in stockinged feet we were ushered through the crowd 
and the lower part of the house, through the preparations 
for passing travelers, the smell and heat of washing and 
cookery, and an inexpressibly outrageous odor, even for 
this land of frightful smells, evidently of the same nature 
as that of the rice-fields. 

Notwithstanding this horror, we found, on clambering 
up the steep little staircase of dark, slippery wood, better 
fitted to stockings than to boots, a most charming, cleanly 
apartment ready for us : ready, I say, but its three big 
rooms, which took all one side of the court, contained 
nothing but a drawing hanging in each room and a vase 
filled with flowers ; in justice, I ought to add a European 
table of the simplest make, and three European chairs. 
Under them was spread a piece of that red cloth which 
seems to have a fascination for the Japanese — perhaps 
as being European. 

Everything was of the cleanest — wall, floor, stairs, 
tables ; everything was dusted, wiped, rubbed, polished. 

It was too hot and we were too tired to go out and see 
the town, noisy with the excitement of a festival. The 
Doctor directed the preparation of a meal on a Japanese 
basis of rice, mingled and enlivened with the contents of 
various cans ; and meanwhile I went down another little 
staircase of cleanly white wood, at the farther end of our 
apartment, to our little private bath-room below. 

This was about six feet square, and its furniture con- 
sisted of a deep lacquer tray to lay clothes in. The bath- 
tub was sunk in the floor, but so that its edge rose high 
above the level of the room. I had declined the '* honor- 

34 



able hot water," which is the Japanese necessity, and ob- 
tained cold, against protest. I had yet to learn the lux- 
ury and real advantage of the Japanese hot bath. I closed 
my door, but my window was open, and through its wooden 
bars I could see our opposite neighbors across the garden 
of the courtyard — a whole family, father, mother, chil- 
dren, and young daughter — file down to the big bath- 
room at the corner, whose windows were open to mine. I 
heard them romp and splash, and saw heads and naked 
arms shining through the steam. Meditating upon the 
differences which make propriety in various places, I joined 
my friends at dinner and listened to what the Doctor had 
to say upon the Japanese indifference to nudity ; how Jap- 
anese morals are not affected by the simplicity of their 
costumes, and that, of course, to the artist it seems a great 
pity that the new ideas should be changing these habits 
in a race so naturally law-abiding; for even the govern- 
ment is interfering, and enforcing dress within city limits. 
Then came the question whether this be a reminiscence 
of Polynesian ancestry and simplicity, or born of climate 
and cleanliness. And, indeed, all Japan spends most of 
its time washing, so that the very runners bathe more 
times a day than our fine ladies. Meanwhile the servant- 
girls were spreading for us the blue-green mosquito net- 
tings, put together with bands of orange silk. They were 
slung by cords from the corners of the beams, which serve 
for a cornice, and they made a good-sized square tent in 
the middle of the room. Inside, our beds were made up 
on the floor, of well-wadded coverlets folded one upon 
another. One of these I took for a pillow. I have not 
yet dared to try the block of wood, hollowed out for the 
nape of the neck, which serves for a pillow in Japan, not- 
withstanding that it has a pad to relieve its severity — a 
pad of paper fastened on, and which you remove sheet by 
sheet as you want a clean pillow-slip. I can understand, 

35 



however, how precious it must be in a country where the 
women keep, day and night, undisturbed, those coiffures 
of marvelous black hair, glistening with camellia oil, the 




OUR RUNNER. 



name of which I like better than its perfume. From in- 
side my netting I could see, as I was lying, — for the 
screens, which made our windows, remained wide open, — 

36 



through the topmost branches of the trees of the garden, 
the Japanese family opposite, now ending their evening 
meal. 

Laughter and chatter, clattering of cups, rap of pipes 
against boxes, a young man came in and bent over one 
of the women seated upon the floor; the girl repeated 
some prayer, with clapping hands outstretched;, the lights 
were put out, all but the square "ando," or floor night- 
lantern, and they drew their screens. I fell asleep, to be 
waked with a start by the watchman, who, every hour, 
paced through the garden, striking a wooden clapper, 
and impertinently assured us of the hour. 

This weary noise marked the intervals of a night of 
illness, made worse by nightmares of the cholera, from 
which we were flying. The earhest dawn was made hid- 
eous by the unbarring and rolling of the heavy amados^ 
the drawing back of the inside screens (skojis), and the 
clattering of clogs over pavement, through other parts 
of the house. Our Japanese family across the way I 
could hear at their ablutions, and, later, tumultuously de- 
parting for early trains ; and at last I slept in broad 
daylight. 

Late in the morning we entered our friend the basha. 
In the daylight I noticed that the horses wore something 
like a Dutch collar, and were harnessed with ropes. Two 
men, one the driver, the other the running groom, sat on 
the low front seat. Our trunks and bags and Japanese 
baskets encumbered the omnibus seats, on which we 
stretched our sick and wearied bodies, for the Doctor 
himself was ill, and smiled mechanically when I tortured 
him with questions. We left town at a full gallop, and 

1 Rain-doors, outer wooden screens, which close the house at night, and 
roll in a groove. 

3* 37 



at risk of life for every one in the streets; one of our 
drivers meanwhile blowing wildly through a horn, to the 
inspiriting of the horses and the frightening of the Jap- 
anese small-boy. Soon one of our men plunged off his 
seat and began running by the horses in the old Japanese 
way — hereditary with him, for they follow the calling 
from generation to generation. Running without pause 
and without sweating, he threw his body back as if re- 
straining his pace to that of the horses. At the limits of 
the town, in full run, he stripped his upper garments and 
showed himself tattooed at every visible point. Above 
the double strip of his breech-clout, a waterfall, a dragon, 
and a noble hero made a fine network of blue and pink on 
the moving muscles. 

Now the road became heavy, wet, and full of deep 
ruts, and our miserable ponies came to a standstill — 
and balked. The Japanese mildness of our driver disap- 
peared. He took to beating their poor backs with a 
heavy bamboo cane, while we remonstrated feebly, re- 
gretting that we had not sufficient strength to beat him 
too. Then he explained, deferentially, that confusion 
seized him at being unable to keep his promise of deliv- 
ering us to Imaichi for the appointed hour, and I felt as 
if we had been put in the wrong. Imagine the difference 
had he been — any one but a Japanese. We turned aside 
from the main way into a little dry side-path, which led 
us into the hills and moors. As we got among them we 
left the annoying odors of the rice-fields and smelled for 
the first time the fragrance of wild roses, looking like 
ours, but a little paler. This was the first thing which 
reminded me of home — the roses that the Japanese do 
not seem to care for, do not seem to understand. With 
them the rose has no records, no associations, as with us; 
for, once on this farther side of the garden of Iran, the 
peony and the chrysanthemum, the lotus and the iris, 

38 




:/ 'r^^^'M'^^-K^ 



: '''0/ 



IN THE GREAT AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIA. 



the peach, the cherry, and the plum, make up the flower- 
poetry of the extreme East. 

Then, leaving the dry and sunny uplands, we entered a 
famous avenue, shaded for twenty miles by gigantic cryp- 
tomeria trees 60 to 120 feet high. They were planted, 
as an act of homage, some two centuries ago, by some 
mighty noble, when it was decided to place at Nikko the 
tomb of the great shogun lyeyasu. They rise on each 
side of the sunken road, from banks and mounds, over 
which steps lead, from time to time, to plantations and 
rice-fields beyond, and to shrines peeping out among the 
trees. In side-roads above, on either hand, passed occa- 
sionally peasants and pack-horses laden with forage, or 
the bright shine of a peasant woman's red skirt. Where 
an occasional habitation, or two or three, are niched in 
some opening, the tall columns of the great trees are in- 
terrupted by spaces filled with crossed branches of the 
wilder pine ; and behind these, outside, sometimes the 
Hght-green feathery mass of a bamboo grove. Against 
the bank stood low, thatched buildings; near them the 
great trees were often down, or sometimes dying; an 
occasional haystack, sliced ofif below by use, was fastened, 
in thick projection, around some smaller tree. Once, at 
a turn of the road, near a building with wide roof, pushed 
against the corner bank out of a basin fringed with iris, 
sprang into the air a little jet of water. Near by, a soli- 
tary ditcher had placed in a bamboo fence some bright 
red blossom, with its stem and leaves, apparently to 
cheer him at his work. 

The heavy road was being ditched on each side to carry 
off the soaking waters, and our weary, miserable horses 

broke down again. A and I rested by going in 

advance, and I experienced the new sensation of walk- 
ing among the bamboo stems, like an insect among the 

41 



knotted stalks of a gigantic grass. The still heat of the 
sun burned in great smoky streaks across our way, spotted 
by the flight of many yellow butterflies. There was no 
sound of birds in the high spaces above ; the few peasants 
that we met slipped past on their straw sandals, their 
noiseless horses also shod with straw ; occasionally a 
shiver of the great spruces overhead, and far behind us 
the cries of our grooms to their horses. 

It was two o'clock w^hen we galloped bravely, as if with 
fresh horses, into the single long street which is Imaichi 
village. We were now on high ground, some two thou- 
sand feet above our point of departure, and could feel, 
but not see clearly, in the blaze of sunlight, great moun- 
tains lost in great wet clouds. 

We stopped at the village inn ; drivers and runners 
were sitting on the stone bench in front, drinking tea, 
when we drove up. We sat down on the straw-matted 
porch inside, the whole front of the building open, and 
drank miserable, herby tea, and tasted the usual sweet 
balls of sugary stuff. 

Alongside the tea-house, in one of the recesses between 
the buildings, we could see the runners of kiirumas being 
washed off and rubbed down, just as if they were horses 
in a livery stable. As they stood naked, their compan- 
ions poured pails of water over them, its brown spread 
covering the stone slabs. Some of them, in the porch, 
lay on their backs, others prone, others on the side, all 
near a kettle, which hung over a charcoal fire, in which, 
perhaps, they were heating sake. One on his back, his 
neck on the wooden pillow, was smoking. The village 
itself lay in hot, clean repose, — not dusty, — the rows of 
buildings on each side of the street irregular, but all of 
the same appearance. Most of the fronts were open, the 
goods all displayed outside of the walls, or on the floors, 

42 



innumerable pieces of paper hanging about everywhere. 
A few men sat about on the porches, their naked feet 
hanging off, their sandals on the ground below them, the 
inevitable umbrella by their side. Most of the village 
was asleep in nakedness. The color of flesh glowed in 
the hot shade ; brown and sallow in the men,^ ruddy on 
the breasts of the women and the entirely nude bodies of 
the children. 

And here, now, we said good-by to the basha, and 
got into the two-wheeled baby wagon, which they call a 
kiiriima. One man ran between the shafts, and another, 
in front, was fastened to the cross-bar by a long strip of 
cloth tied about him. The file of our five wagons started 
off at a rapid trot — we had two for our baggage — with 
the Doctor ahead, his white helmet dancing before us in 
the sun. From under my umbrella I tried to study and 
occasionally to draw the motions of the muscles of our 
runners, for most of them were naked, except for the com- 
plicated strip around the loins — a slight development of 
the early fig-leaf The vague recall of the antique that is 
dear to artists — the distinctly rigid muscles of the legs 
and thighs, the rippling swellings of the backs — revived 
the excitement of professional study and seemed a god- 
send to a painter. The broad, curved hat, lifted by a pad 
over the head, was but an Eastern variation, not so far re- 
moved from the Greek Trstacjo? of Athenian riders. Some 
heads were bare; that is to say, their thick black thatch 
was bound with a long handkerchief, which otherwise 
hung on the shoulders or danced around their necks. Not 
all were naked. The youngest, a handsome fellow, had 
his tunic pulled up above the thighs, and the slope of 
his drapery and his wide sleeves gave him all the eleg- 
ance of a medieval page. I found it easier now to strug- 
gle against heat and indolence, and to make my studies 
as our runners ran along, for we had entered again the 

45 



avenue of the great cryptomeria. We had passed the en- 
trance of another, which in old times was the road traveled 
by the Mikado's ambassador, in the fifth month, when he 
journeyed across the island to carry offerings to lyeyasu, 
in his tomb at Nikko. The big trees grew still taller in 
this higher air, their enormous roots spreading along the 
embankments in great horizontal lines and stages of but- 
tresses. Prolonged wafts of cool air blew upon us from 
the west, to which we were hurrying. Above us spread 
a long avenue of shade, high up and pale in the blue. 
And so we got into Nikko as the sun was setting with 
the delicious sensation that at last we were in coolness 
and in shade. 

Right before us, crossing the setting sun, was the 
island mountain of Nikko-san ; small enough to be taken 
in by the eye, as it stood framed by greater mountains, 
which were almost lost in the glittering of wet sunlight. 
The mountain threw its shade on the little village ; down 
its one long street we rode to the bridge that spans the 
torrent, which, joining another stream, gives Nikko the 
look of an island. Alongside this bridge, at a distance of 
two hundred feet, crosses the red lacquer bridge, over 
which we are not allowed to pass. It is reserved for the 
family Tokugawa, the former shoguns of Japan, whose 
ancestors built the great shrines of Nikko, and for the 
Emperor on his occasional visits. It stands supported 
on a gigantic framework of stone, imitating wood, the 
uprights being pierced to allow the crosspieces to run 
through, against all European constructional principles, 
but with a beauty which is Japanese, and a fitness proved 
by time. 

These great posts under the bridge lean against what 
seems the wall of the mountain ; the rock foundation being 
supplemented, everywhere that a break occurs, by artifi- 

46 




THE WATERFALL IN OUR GARDEN. 



cial work. Here and there cascades fall over natural and 
over artificial walls and glisten far up through the trees 
on the opposite side of the bridge. As we rattled over it 
we looked down on the overflowing long wooden trough, 
which carried the pure waters of the mountain to the vil- 
lage that we had passed, and upon the torrent below, whose 
limpid clearness was made blue by mist, where the warmer 
air was chilled by a coldness drawn from far-up moun- 
tains. Before us steps of enormous width passed under 
the foliage and turned above in many directions, and there 
on the lowest step, her dainty feet on straw sandals, whose 
straps divided the toes of the close-fitting Japanese socks, 
with bare ankles, stood our hostess, in latest European 
dress, most graceful contrast to our own consciousness of 
being jaded and dirty, and to the nakedness of our run- 
ners. Panting with the last run, they stood at rest, and 
leaned forward against the cross-bar of the shafts, with 
muscles still trembling, clear streams of sweat varnishing 
their bronze nakedness, and every hair plastered with wet 
on forehead, chest, and body. Just before them rustled 
the unrumpled starched spread of the skirts of the fair 
American. She was summering at Nikko, and, friendly 
with the Buddhist clergy, had arranged that one of the 
priests should let us have his house, and kindly walked 
with us to it, a little way up in one of the first open spaces 
of the mountain. After passing the great outside fringe 
of trees we found a large clear opening, broken up by 
walled inclosures, the wall sometimes high and sometimes 
low, and edged by gutters through which the torrents ran. 
These were the former residences of princes, whom eti- 
quette obliged to worship officially at Nikko. A quarter 
of a mile up we came to our own garden, — with an enor- 
mous wide wall or embankment of stone, some twenty feet 
deep, — which also had been a prince's, and now belongs 
to the little Buddhist priest who is our landlord. There 
4 49 



are two houses in the inclosure, one of which he lets to us. 
Ours is brand-new and two stories high, while his is old 
and low, with an enormous roof, and an arbor built out 
from the eaves and connecting with his little garden. 
High behind his house rise rocks and wall ; and on top of 
them are planted willows, pines, maples, and the paulow- 
nia, whose broad leaves are part of the imperial crest. A 
little waterfall tumbles over the rocks and gives us water 
for our garden and for our bath. In our house we made 
the acquaintance of Kato, who is to wait upon us. A few 
minutes later we were welcomed by our landlord, dressed 
for the occasion. He conducted us to our rooms, and, leav- 
ing for a moment, returned with a china bowl that was 
covered with a napkin, and contained sweetmeats which 
he told me are peculiar to Nikko. 

Seeing that we were helpless with the language, he 
bowed low and left us to our bath and to a survey of our 
new quarters. We were tired, sick, miserable, weary trav- 
elers, having gone through a shipwreck of heat and fa- 
tigue, but there was a fascination in feeling that this baby- 
house was ours, that it was typical, that on entering we 
left our shoes out on our own threshold and were walking 
on the soft clean mats, stocking- toed ; that in a few min-. 
utes we should be stretched on these as on a bed, and 
that Kato would pour out our tea. Our lowest story, 
which has a veranda, can be divided so as to make a ser- 
vant's room and a hall beyond. In an L behind stretches 
out a wash-room with a big dresser fixed to the wall, under 
which, through a trough, rolls a torrent from the water- 
fall ; and, farther on, is the little square bath-room with 
one side all open to the floor, when the wooden screen is 
•drawn, through which we get light and air, and through 
which the box containing burning charcoal is brought from 
the priest's house to heat our bath. We have a little stair- 
case — just the width of our trunk — which leads sharply 

50 



up to the veranda above, from which we step into A 's 

room and then into mine ; they are separated by movable 
screens, so that we can be about as private as if the divis- 
ion were a chalk line. But outside we have a wealth of 
moving wall : first the paper screens, which, when we wish, 
can separate us from the veranda ; then, lastly, on its edge, 
the amado, or wooden sliding-doors, which are- lying now 
in their corner box, but which later will be pulled out and 
linked together, and close the open house for the night. 

Then, as we were about leaving, we solemnly placed a 
great ornamental revolver before the little god of Con- 
tentment who sits upon the Tokonoma — that mantelpiece 
which is at the level of my eye when I lie on the floor, 
and which is the Japanese ideal seat of honor, but never 
occupied. This revolver is left there to appease a Jap- 
anese conventional fear of robbers. We went down in 
the twilight to our friends, and had a very European 
supper, and sat on their veranda, looking through the 
trees toward the bridge, in a moonhght of mother-of- 
pearl; and we were so sleepy that I can only suppose we 
must have talked of home, and I can only remember our 
host clapping his hands for lanterns, and Kato leading 
us back, with the light held low, and the noise of the 
torrents running under the little stone bridges that we 
passed, and our taking off our shoes on our own door- 
step, and the thunder of the amado as Kato rolled them 
out for the night. 



51 



THE SHRINES OF lYEYASU AND lYEMITSU 
IN THE HOLY MOUNTAIN OF NIKKO 

July 25. 

FROM where we are in the Holy Mountain, our first 
visit would be naturally to the shrine of the shogun 
lyeyasu, whose extreme walls I see among the highest 
trees whenever I look from our balcony over our little 
waterfall. 

lyeyasu died in 161 6, having fought, he said, ninety 
battles and eighteen times escaped death, having almost 
destroyed Christianity, and leaving his family established 
as rulers of Japan. In obedience to his dying wishes, his 
son and successor removed the body of his father from 
its resting-place in the south to this final tomb at Nikko. 
Here, in 16 17, with complicated and mystic ceremonial, 
he was buried and deified. 

If you have no work on Japan near by to refer to, sub 
voce lyeyasu, I can tell you, briefly, what he did or what he 
was, though I, too, have no books at my hand. He was 
a great man, a patient waiter upon opportunity, who at 
the end of the sixteenth century came upon the scene of a 
great civil war, then filled by two protagonists, the mili- 
tary ruler, Nobunaga, and his lieutenant, Hideyoshi, who 
was to be known later as Taiko Sama. Their aim was to 
settle something more definitely, of course in their favor; 
and, in fact, the death of the former and the triumphant 
success of the latter, who succeeded him, went far toward 
disposing of many contending claims, and toward a crys- 
tallizing of the feudal system, which had grown of cen- 
turies of civil war. This is the moment that we see re- 

52 



fleeted in the annals of the first Christian missionaries, to 
whom the mihtary chiefs of Japan were alternately kind 
or cruel. 




PORTRAIT-STATUE OF lY^YASU IN CEREMONIAL DRESS. 



When Hideyoshi died he had grown to be the master 
of Japan; he had been made Regent of the Empire, as a 
title of honor, for he was that and more in reality ; he 
had become one of the greatest of Oriental warriors, and 
had begun life as a groom, the son of a humble peasant. 
The name of Taiko (Great Gate) he took like other regents, 
on retiring nominally from office, but with the addition of 
Sama (Lord) it is applied to him alone in popular mem- 
ory. Naturally, then, he believed in a possible dynasty 
originating in him. At his death he could see, as his 
greatest fear for the future of the young son to whom he 
wished to leave his power, this man lyeyasia Tokugawa, 
lord now of many provinces, but who had begun humbly, 
and who had assisted him in breaking many enemies, 
receiving a reward with every success, and consolidating 
'* 53 



meanwhile his own smaller powers. The dying Taiko 
made complicated arrangements to secure the good-will 
of lyeyasu, and also to prevent his encroachments. These 
arrangements, including and combining the agencies of 
numbers of princes and vassals, many of them newly 
Christianized, seem only the more certainly to have forced 
on a position in which lyeyasil, with few allies, but with 
clear aims and interests, took the field against a larger 
number of princes, commanding more men, but not united 
in any intention as fixed as his was. These he defeated 
for once and all, on a great battlefield, Sekigahara, on 
some day in October in the year 1600. It was the 
greatest battle that Japan ever saw, and one of the 
bloodiest — remarkable for us because of the death of 
three of the Christian leaders against lyeyasu, warriors 
distinguished before in many wars, who could not, being 
Christians, take their own lives in defeat, as their Jap- 
anese traditions of honor commanded. Hence the victor 
had them beheaded — a shameful death, and thereby 
heroic. These were almost his only immediate victims, 
lyeyasil wisely forgave, when it paid, and merely weak- 
ened the beaten, increasing the possessions but not the 
powers of his adherents; and finally remained in undis- 
puted power, with great titles from the Mikado, who, 
though poor in power, was still a dispenser of honors, for, 
as with the greater gods, the victrix causa pleased. 

Meanwhile the protection of the son of the great Taiko 
Sama, for which all this war had been supposed to grow, 
had not been effected, and even this one obstacle or re- 
minder was to disappear from before lyeyasu, but not for 
several years, and only just before his death. 

He had, in Japanese custom, resigned his apparent 
power to his son, for behind him he could act more ob- 
scurely and with less friction. Then began the drama of 
the extinction of Christianity ; slowly, for many reasons, 

54 



not the least being that several Christian princes, with 
their vassals, had supported lyeyasii in his struggle. And 
at length the son of Taiko Sama, Hideyori, indirectly con- 
nected with the Christian side, fell before lyeyasu. His 
strong castle at Osaka was said to have become a place of 
refuge for the persecuted and the discontented, even to the 
very Christians whom his father had cruelly persecuted. 

Which was in the wrong and disturbed the waters, the 
wolf or the lamb, I do not know, but only that in June, 
1615, the great castle was attacked by lyeyasil and his son 
in as bloody a battle as was ever fought; and notwith- 
standing that for a moment victory hung in the balance, 
the Tokugawa Luck prevailed, the castle took fire, thou- 
sands perished, and Hideyori and his mother disappeared. 

Whether lyeyasu was the author of the code of laws or 
rules at which he is supposed to have worked during these 
years of waiting, with the aid of learned scholars, to be- 
queath them to his descendants for the maintenance of 
the order of things he left, I do not 
know ; nor perhaps was the infor- 
mation I once had about them at 
all accurate. They, or their spirit, 
however, served to guide the na- 
tion for the next two hundred and 
fifty years ; that is to say, until the 
second Commodore Perry came to 
Japan, with the increased weight of 
an outside world much changed. 

Meanwhile the great man died, 
leaving a great personal fame be- 
hind him, over and above the pow- 
ers he could transmit. He was 

buried here, as I said. The place was chosen in 161 6; 
at the end of the same year the buildings were begun, and 
in the beginning of the next year were partly completed. 

57 




SKETCH OF STATUE OF lYl&YASU 
TOKUGAWA. 



When the funeral procession arrived, in nineteen days 
from lyeyasu's former resting-place, amid great ceremo- 
nies and religious rites, the title of *' Supreme Highness, 
Lord of the East, Great Incarnation," was given to the 
hero and ruler and son of the small laird of Matsudaira. 

While he was being thus deified the persecution of the 
Christians increased in violence, passing into a hideous 
delirium of cruelty ; wiping out its victims, but unable to 
affect their courage. There can be apparently no ex- 
aggeration of the sufferings of the martyrs nor of the 
strength of mind shown by them — a courage and con- 
stancy ennobling to Japan. 

Hidetada, the son of lyeyasu, is buried at Yeddo (To- 
kio) ; but lyemitsu, the grandson, has a temple and a 
tomb here in the forest, alongside of his grandfather's. 

He succeeded to power in 1623, and lived and ruled 
some thirty years more with an energy worthy of lyeyasu, 
and carried the system to completion. The laws known 
as the laws of lyeyasu are sometimes made out to be his. 
These laws, based on the old feudal habits, and influenced 
and directed by the great Chinese doctrines of relation- 
ship and duties, are not laws as we think of law, nor were 
they to be published. They were to be kept secret for 
the use of the Tokugawa house ; to serve as rules for con- 
duct in using their power, so as to secure justice, which is 
in return to secure power, that exists for its own end in 
the mind of rulers. These laws, some of which are reflec- 
tions, or moral maxims, or references to the great man's 
experience, made out a sort of criminal code, — the re- 
lations of the classes, — matters of rank and etiquette, 
and a mechanism of government. They asserted the 
supremacy, and at the same time destroyed the power, of 
the Mikado, and by strict rules of succession, residence, 
and continued possession bound up the feudal nobles. 
They reasserted the great individual virtues of filial 

58 



piety and of feudal loyalty, and insisted on the traditions 
of military honor. "The sword" was to be ''the soul 
of the Samurai," ^ and with it these have carried the na- 
tional honor and inteUigence in its peculiar expressions. 

Full recognition was given to the teaching, *'Thou 
shalt not lie beneath the same sky, nor tread on the same 
earth, with the murderer of thy lord." The rights of the 
avenger of blood were admitted, even though he should 
pay the penalty of his life. 

Suicide, which had long been a Japanese development 
of chivalrous feeling and military honor, was still to be 
regarded as purifying of all stain, and, for the first time, 
allowed in mitigation of the death penalty. 

Indeed, half a century later, the forty-seven Ronin 
C' wave-people " — Samurai who had lost their natural 
lord and their rights) were to die in glorious suicide, 
carrying out the feudal idea of fidelity. 

You know the story probably ; at any rate, you will 
find it in Mitford's tales of old Japan. It is a beautiful 
story, full of noble details, telling how, by the mean con- 
trivance of a certain lord, the Prince of Ako was put in 
the wrong, and his condemnation to death and confisca- 
tion obtained. And how, then, forty-seven gentlemen, 
faithful vassals of the dead lord, swore to avenge the 
honor of their master, and for that purpose to put aside 
all that might stand in the way. For this end they put 
aside all else they cared for, even wife and children, and 
through every obstacle pursued their plan up to the fav- 
orable moment when they surprised, on a winter night, 
in his palace, among his guards, the object of their ven- 
geance, whose suspicions had been allayed by long delay. 
And how his decapitated head was placed by them up- 
on his victim's tomb, before the forty-seven surrendered 

1 The Samurai, the entire warrior class of the feudal days ; therefore, also, 
the gentry. 

59 



themselves to justice, and were allowed to commit suicide 
by hara-kiri, and how they have since lived forever in 
memory of Japan. 

These laws, then, destroyed nothing; they reasserted 
certain Japanese traditions and customs, but made out, 
through many details, the relations of dependence of all 
classes of society upon the shogun, as vassal indeed of 
the Mikado, but supreme ruler who held the key of all. 
All this did lyemitsu carry out, as well as the consequent 
seclusion of the country; the only manner of avoiding 
ideals which might clash with those upon which this con- 
solidation of the past was based. And to many of these 
ideals, to the idea of the sacredness of the family, to the 
idea of subjection to the law of the ruler, Christianity, by 
its ideal of marriage, by its distinctions of the duty to 
Caesar, — to name only a few reasons, — might be found 
an insidious dissolvent. Therefore, if it be necessary to 
find a high motive, lyemitsu did what he could to trample 
out the remains of Christianity, which were to expire, a 
few years after his death, in a final holocaust as terrible 
and glorious as Nero himself could have wished to see. 

From that time, for two centuries, all went on the 
same, until the arrival of the foreigners found a system 
so complete, so interlocked and rigid, as to go to pieces 
with the breaking of a few links. 

That break was supplied by the necessity of yielding 
to the Christian and foreign demand of entrance, and in 
so far abandoning the old ways. 

With this proof of weakness the enemies of the Toku- 
gawa and those of the system began to assert themselves, 
circumstances aiding, and in 1868 the last of the race 
resigned all powers and retired to private life. 

The details of the enormous changes, as they followed 
one another, are too many and sudden, and apparently 
too contradictory, for me to explain further. Even now 

60 



I repeat this deficient summary of the Tokugawa story 
only because of wishing to recall who they were that have 
temples and tombs about us, and to recall, also, that such 
has been the end of the beginning which is buried here. 

The approach to the temple, to which most paths lead, 
is through a great broad avenue, a quarter of a mile 
long, bordered by high stone walls, above which rise high 
banks and higher trees. Between these dark green walls, 
all in their own shade, — in the center of the enormous 
path and in the full light of the sky, — a brilliant torrent 
rushes down in a groove of granite, hidden occasionally 
under the road. Here and there drop out from the walls 
noisy columns of clearest water. 

In the distance beyond, through a mass of closer shade, 
made by two rows of dark cryptomeria, that are planted 
on banks faced with stones, — for here the road divides 
into three different grades of ascent by enormous steps, — 
shine the high white walls of the temple grounds, edged 
with a red-lacquered fence and a black roofed gate of red 
and gold. In the open space before it, with wide roads 
diverging through high walls, crowned with scarlet fences, 
stands a granite Torii, some thirty feet high, whose trans- 
verse stones are crossed by a great black tablet, marked 
with the gilded divine name of lyeyasu. On one side a 
five-storied pagoda, graceful and tall, certainly one hun- 
dred feet high, blood-red and gold in the sunlight, and 
green, white, and gold in the shadows of its five rows of 
eaves, rises free from the trees around it and sends a tall 
spear, encircled with nine gilded rings, into the unbroken 
sky. Bindings and edges of copper, bright green with 
weathering, sparkle on its black roofs, and from their 
twenty corners hang bells of bright green copper. Above 
the steep steps, against the white wall, we pass through 
the first gate. It is recessed, and two gigantic columns 

63 



of trees stand in the corners. Two monsters of uncertain 
lion-form occupy the niches on each side. From the 
upper side of the red pillars, as supports for the engaged 
lintel, stretch out the gilded heads of tapirs, — protectors 
against pestilence, — of lions and elephants, and great 
bunches of the petals of the peony. Above, the archi- 
trave and frieze are painted flat with many colors and 
with gold, and the ends of the many beams which sup- 
port the roofing are gilded. Everywhere, even to the 
ends of the bronze tiles of the black roof, the crest of lye- 
yasii's family, the Tokugawa, is stamped in gilded metal. 

At the inside corner of the gate stands a gigantic cedar, 
said to have grown to this height since the time when 
lyeyasu carried it about with him in his palanquin. Op- 
posite to three red buildings, which are storehouses for 
the memorial treasures of the temple, stands, closer to the 
wall, a charming building, mostly gray, — partly owing to 
the wearing of the black lacquer with time, — and deco- 
rated with carved panels, which make a frieze or string- 
course all around its sides. Above this line of green, red, 
blue, white, and gold, a large space of gray wood, spotted 
with gilt metal where the framework of the outer beams 
is joined, spreads up to the pediment under the eaves, 
which is all carved and painted on a ground of green. 
The heavy roof above is of black bronze and gilded metal 
and is spotted with the golden Tokugawa crest. Below 
the colored band, midway, the black wall has gratings 
with golden hinges, for this delicate splendor is given to 
a stable — the stable of the sacred horse of the god lye- 
yasii. The patient little cream-colored pony has no look 
of carrying such honors ; and I can scarcely imagine his 
little form galloping out in the silence of the night under 
the terrible rider. 

A gentle splashing of water, which mingles with the 
rustling of the trees and the quiet echoes of the pavement, 

64 



comes from the end of the court where its edge is a de- 
scent filled with high forest trees. This lapping sound 
comes from the temple font, a great wet mass of stone, 
looking like solid water. It has been so exactly balanced 
on its base that the clear mountain stream overflows its 
sides and top in a perfectly fitting liquid sheet This sa- 
cred well-basin has a canopy with great black bronze- 
and-gold roof, supported by white stone pillars, three on 
each corner, that are set in bronze sockets and strapped 
with gilded metal. The pediment and the brackets which 
cap the pillars are brilliantly painted, and the recessed 
space below the curved roof-beam is filled with palm-like 
curves of carved waves and winged dragons. Next to 
this, and at right angles to it, is a heavy bronze Torii, 
through which we go up to another court, turning away 
from the buildings we have seen. On the dark surface of 
the Torii glisten the golden Tokugawa crests ; on the great 
tie-beam, the upper pillars, and the central upright. Near 
us, the eaves of its lower roof continuing the Hnes of the 
water-tank paviHon, is the closed library, red, dehcately 
adorned with color under the eaves, and with the same 
heavy black roofing of bronze dotted with gold which 
all the buildings have in a heavy monotony. The steps 
lead us to another court, spotted with different buildings, 
among tremendous trees — a bronze pavilion with a hang- 
ing bell, a bell tower, and a drum tower, closed in with 
sloping walls of red lacquer, and a large lantern of bronze 
under a bronze paviHon, whose curious, European, semi- 
Gothic details contrast suddenly with all this alien art, and 
prove its origin a tribute from trading Christian Holland 
to the mortal deity worshiped here. On one side, where 
the forest slopes down in sun and shadow, stands a Budd- 
hist temple, sole survivor of the faith in this place, now 
turned over to the official and native worship. The lat- 
ticed gold-and-black screens were all closed, except in the 

67 




YOUNG PRIEST. 



center, through which we x:ould see the haze and occa- 
sional gUtter of the gold of gods and altar ornaments, and 
the paleness of the mats. On its red veranda stood a young 
Buddhist priest, whom our companions knew ; a sHght, 
elegant figure, a type of modesty and refinement. Far- 

68 



ther back, on the other side of the veranda, an older com- 
panion looked down the valley at some girls whose voices 
we could hear among the trees. 

The main entrance rises above the high steps to a little 
esplanade with heavy railing, on the level of a higher em- 
bankment. The court that we were in was full of broken 
shadows from its own tall trees, and from all this accumu- 
lation of buildings, red-lacquered and gilded, black-and- 
bronze roofed, spotted and stained with moss and lichens, 
or glittering here and there in their many metals. Long 
lines of Hght trickled down the gray trunks and made 
a light gray haze over all these miscellaneous treasures. 
Great lanterns (toro) of stone, capped with green and yel- 
low moss, metal ones of bronze and iron, stand in files to- 
gether here and in the lower court, or are disposed in rows 
along the great stone wall, which is streaked by the weather 
and spotted with white and purple lichens. Along its 
upper edge runs the red-lacquered wall, heavily roofed, 
of the cloister which surrounds the farther court above. 
Its face is paneled between the metal-fastened beams and 
posts with two rows of deep carvings of innumerable birds 
and trees and waves and clouds and flowers. All these 
are painted and gilded, as are the frieze above and the 
intervals between the gilded rafters. 

On all this space, and on the great white gate, the 
*' Gate Magnificent," the full sun embroidered the red and 
white and colored surfaces with milHons of stitches of 
light and shadow. 

The gate, or triumphal arch, is a two-storied building 
with heavy bronze-tiled roof, capped and edged, like all 
the rest, with gilded metal, and spotted with the gilded 
crest of the Tokugawa. Its front tow^ard us rises in the 
well-known curve, shadowing a pediment, full of painted 
sculpture. Eight white pillars embroidered with delicate 
reliefs support the white lintel, which is embossed with 
5* 69 



great divine monsters and strapped with gilded metal. In 
the niches on each side are seated two repellant painted 
images, inside of white walls, which are trellises of deeply- 
carved floral ornament. These figures are warriors on 
guard, in ancient and Japanese costume, armed with bows 
and quivers of arrows, whose white, wrinkled, and crafty 
faces look no welcome to the intruder, and recall the cruel, 
doubtful look of the guardian statues of foxes that protect 
the entrances of the primitive shrines of the land-god Inari. 
The far-projecting white capitals are the half-bodies of 
lion-like monsters with open mouths and stretched-out 
paws. Above these, below the carved balcony which 
marks the second story, the cornice is made of a wilder- 
ness of tenfold brackets, black lacquered and patterned 
with gold, and from each of the ten highest ones a gilded 
lion's head frowns with narrowed eyes. 

The balcony is one long set of panels — of little panels 
carved and painted on its white line with children playing 
among flowers. Above, again, as many white pillars as 
below ; along their sides a wild fringe of ramping dragons 
and the pointed leaves of the baitiboo. This time the pil- 
lars are crowned with the fabulous dragon-horse, with 
gilded hoofs dropping into air, and lengthy processes of 
horns receding far back into the upper bracketings of 
the roof. Upon the center of the white-and-gold lintel, 
so delicately carved with waves as to seem smooth in this 
delirium of sculpture, is stretched between two of the mon- 
ster capitals a great white dragon with gilded claws and 
gigantic protruding head. But all these beasts are tame 
if compared with the wild army of dragons that cover and 
people the innumerable brackets which make the cornice 
and support the complicated rafters under the roof. Tier 
upon tier hang farther and farther out, like some great 
mass of vampires about to fall. They are gilded ; their 
jaws are lacquered red far down into their throats, against 

70 



which their white teeth glitter. Far into the shade spreads 
a nightmare of frowning eyebrows, and pointed fangs and 
outstretched claws extended toward the intruder. It would 
be terrible did not one feel the coldness of the unbelieving 
imagination which perhaps merely copied these duphcates 
of earlier terrors. 

So it is, at least, in this bright, reasonable morning 
light ; but I can fancy that late in autumn evenings, or 
in winter moonlight, or lighted by dubious torches, one 
might believe in the threats of these blinking eyes and 
grinning jaws, and fear that the golden terrors might 
cease clinging to the golden beams. It is steadying to 
the eye to meet at last the plain gold-and-black checker 
pattern of the ends of the final rafters below the roof, and 
to see against the sky peaceful bells like inverted tulips, 
with gilded clappers for pistils, hanging from the corners 
of the great bronze roof 

And as we pass through the gate we are made to see 
how ill omen was turned from the Luck of the Tokugawa 
by an " evil-averting pillar," which has its pattern carved 
upside down as a sacrifice of otherwise finished per- 
fection. 

I noticed also that a childish realism has furnished the 
lower monsters of the gate with real bristles for their 
distended nostrils ; and this trifle recalls again the taint 
of the unbelieving imagination, which insists upon small 
points of truth as a sort of legal protection for its failing 
in the greater ones. 

Within this third cloistered court which we now en- 
tered is an inclosed terrace, some fifty yards square. In- 
side of its walls are the oratory and the final shrine, to 
which we can pass through another smaller gate, this time 
with lower steps. The base of the terrace, which makes 
the level of the innermost court, is cased with large blocks 
of cemented stone. Above it is a fence or wall with 

73 



heavy roof and projecting gilded rafters. Great black 
brackets support the roof. Between them all is carved 
and colored in birds and flowers and leaves, almost real 
in the shadow. Between the decorated string-courses 
the wall is pierced with gilded screens, through which 
play the lights and darks, the colors and the gilding of 
the shrine inside. At the very bottom, touching the 
stone plinth, carved and painted sculptures in high relief 
project and cast the shadows of leaves and birds upon the 
brilliant granite. 

Beyond this inclosure and the shrine within it the court 
is abruptly ended by a lofty stone wall, high as the tem- 
ple roof, and built into the face of the mountain. From 
its very edge the great slope is covered with tall trees 
that look down upon this basin filled with gilding and 
lacquers, with carvings and bronze, with all that is most 
artificial, delicate, labored, and transitory in the art of 
man. 

It is in this contrast, insisted upon with consummate 
skill, that lies the secret beauty of the art of the men who 
did all this. The very lavishness of finish and of detail, 
the heaped-up exaggerations of refinement and civiliza- 
tion, bring out the more the simplicity and quiet of the 
nature about them. Up to the very edges of the carv- 
ings and the lacquers grow the lichens and mosses and 
small things of the forest. The gilded temples stand hid- 
den in everlasting hills and trees, open above to the upper 
sky which lights them, and to the changing weather with 
which their meaning changes. Nothing could recall more 
completely the lessons of death, the permanence of change, 
and the transitoriness of man. 

We went up the steps of the recessed gate, which re- 
peats the former theme of white and gold and black in 
forms of an elegance that touches the limits of good taste. 
Its heavy black roof, whose four ridges are crowned by 

74 



long bronze dragons and crawling lions, opens in a high 
curve on the front and sides to show under the bent 
white-and-gold ridge-beams a pediment strapped and in- 
tersected by spaces of small carvings, white and tinted, 
relieved by red perpendiculars of beams. 

White and gold shine in the great brackets and the re- 
cesses of the rafters. Below the white frieze, carved with 
many small figures of Chinese story, the pillars and the 
lintel are inlaid in many carved woods, ornaments of 
dragons, plants, and diapered patterns on the whitened 




LINTEL, BRACKET CAPITAL. 



ground. The opened doors repeat the same faint tones 
of wood, and of white and gold, and of gilded metals. 
The walls, which are open at the base, are merely lattice 
screens. Their exquisite flowered patterns fluctuate with 
gilded accents of whites, greens, lavenders, and blues. 

The gate inside is, therefore, nothing but an orna- 
mented trellis, made still lighter by contrast with the 
solid white doors, trellised at top, but whose lower panels 
are exquisitely embellished with inlaid carved woods and 

n 



chiseled golden metal. We took off our shoes, and as- 
cended the bronze-covered steps of the oratory and 
shrine, which come down from the red-lacquered veranda, 
behind the four carved white pillars of the descending 
porch. Great white dragons with spiky claws project 
from the pillars, and crawl in and out of the double tran- 
som. In the shadow of the roof golden monsters hang 
from the complex brackets. The friezes and bands of 
the temple face are filled with carving, delicate as em- 
bossed tapestry, while the panels, deeply cut into auspi- 
cious forms of birds and flowers, carry full color and gold 
far up into the golden rafters. 

All recesses and openings are filled with half-realities, 
as if to suggest a dread or a delicious interior, as flowers 
might pass through paHngs, or great beasts, types of 
power, might show great limbs through confining bar- 
riers. The long building, indeed, is a great framework, 
strongly marked, dropped on a soHd base, and weighted 
down by a heavy roofing. The white pillars or posts 
which divide its face and corners stand clear between the 
black-and-gold latticed screens, partly lifted, which make 
almost all its wall. 

Strips of the sacramental white paper hang from the 
lower lintel against the golden shade of the interior. In- 
side, pale mats cover the black-lacquer floor. Exquisite 
plain gold pillars, recalling Egyptian shapes, divide the 
gilded central walls. Here and there on the gilded tie- 
beams curved lines of emerald-green or crimson, like 
tendrils, mark with exquisite sobriety a few chamfered 
cuttings. On either side of the long room (fifty feet) are 
two recesses with large gold panels on which symbolic 
forms are freely sketched, and carved inlays of emblematic 
birds fill their farthest walls. Their ceilings are carved, 
inlaid, and painted with imperial flowers, mystic birds, 

78 




INSIDE THE "CAT GATE — GATE TO THE TOME 



and flying figures, and the pervading crest of the Toku- 
gawa. For these were the waiting-rooms of the family, 
and, as A remarked, the impression is that of a prin- 
cess's exquisite apartment, as if the Tartar tent had grown 
into greater fixity, and had been touched by a fairy's 
wand. 

All was bare except for an occasional sacr,ed mirror, or 
hanging gilded ornament, or the hanging papers of the 
native worship; and this absence of the Buddhist images 
and implements of worship left clear and distinct the 
sense of a personal residence — the residence of a divinized 
spirit, not unlike the one that he was used to in life. 

Even more, on the outside of the building the curved 
stone base, like a great pedestal, with pierced niches filled 
with flowers carved and painted between the great 
brackets that support the veranda, makes the temple 
seem as if only deposited for a time, however long that 
time may be. 

We merely looked at the central passage, that, dividing 
the building, leads down and then up to the shrine itself, 
and waited for the time when we shall get further perm^is- 
sion, and I shall be allowed to sketch and photograph. As 
for me, I was wearied with the pleasure of the endless 
detail ; for even now, with all my talk, I have been able 
to note but a little of what I can remember. 

We withdrew, put on our shoes again at the gate, and 
turned below to the east side of the court. We passed 
the Hall of Perfumes, where incense was once burned while 
the monks chanted prayers in the court, as they did when 
lyeyasu was buried. We passed the Hall of the Sacred 
Dances, whose open front makes a large, shady, dim stage, 
with a great red railing on its projecting edge. Within it 
moved a white shadow, the figure of a woman-dancer. 
And then we came to a white-and-gold gate, inside of the 
roofed cloister wall. Above the open door that leads to 
6 8i 



it sleeps a carved white cat, in high relief, said to have 
been the work of a famous left-handed sculptor, carpenter, 
and architect. Its cautious rest may not have been so 
far from the habits of the living lyeyasu, to whose tomb, 
farther on, this is the entrance. 

Framed by the gold and white of the gate and of the 
half-opened door rise the steps built into the hillside and 
all carpeted with brilliant green mosses. The stone rail- 
ings, which for two hundred feet higher up accompany the 
steps, are also cushioned with this green velvet, and our 
steps were as noiseless as if those of the white cat herself. 
All is green, the dark trees descending in sunlight to our 
right and rising on the bank to our left, until we reach an 
open space above, with a bank of rocky wall inclosing the 
clearing. 

Here is the small final shrine, and behind it a stone es- 
planade with a stone fence, within which stands, in the 
extreme of costly simplicity, the bronze tomb of lyeyasu. 
A large bronze gate, roofed in bronze, of apparently a 
single casting, with bronze doors, closes the entrance. 
Before the monument, on a low stone table, are the Budd- 
hist ornaments — the storks, the lotus, and the lion-covered 
vases, all of brass and of great size. 

The tomb itself is of pale golden bronze, in form like 
an Indian shrine : a domed cylinder surmounted by a 
great projecting roof which rises from a necking that 
separates and connects them above — the roof a finial in 
the shape of a forked flame. Five bronze steps, or bases, 
support this emblematic combination of the cube, the 
cylinder, and the globe. 

The crest of the Tokugawa, ten times repeated, seals 
the door upon the burnt ashes of the man who crystal- 
lized the past of his country for more than centuries, and 
left Japan as Perry found it. All his precautions, all his 
elaborate political conservatism, have been scattered to 

82 



the winds with the Luck of the Tokugawa, and the hated 
foreigner leans in sightseeing curiosity upon the raiHng 
of his tomb. 

But the solemnity of the resting-place cannot be 
broken. It lies apart from all associations of history, in 
this extreme of cost and of refined simplicity, in face of 




TOMB OF IVEYASU TOKUGAWA. 



the surrounding powers of nature. There is here no 
defiance of time, no apparent attempt at an equal per- 
manency; it is like a courteous acceptance of the eternal 
peace, the eternal nothingness of the tomb. 



We leaned against the stone rails and talked of lyeyasu 
— of his good nature, of his habit of chatting after battle, 
of his fraudulent pretensions to great descent ; and of the 
deadening influence of the Tokugawa rule, of its belittling 
the classes whose energies were the true life of the coun- 
try. We recognized, indeed, that the rulers of lyeyasil's 
time might have perceived the dangers of change for so 
impressionable a race, but none of us asked whether the 
loss of hundreds of thousands of lives of courageous 
Christians had been made up in the strength of the 
remaining blood. 

Far away the sounds of pilgrims' clogs echoed from the 
steps of distant temples ; we heard the running of man)^ 
waters. Above us a few crows, frequenters of temples, 
spotted the light for a moment, and their cries faded with 
them through the branches. A great, heavy, ugly cater- 
pillar crept along the mossy edge of the balustrade, like 
the fresh incarnation of a soul which had to begin it all 
anew. 



84 




ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF lY^MITSU. 



lYEMITSU 

WE were told by our good friends that the temple 
of lyemitsu, the grandson of lyeyasu, far less pre- 
tentious than the shrine of the grandfather and founder, 
would show us less of the defects which accompanied 
our enjoyment of yesterday. The successors of lyemitsu 
were patrons of art, sybarites, of those born to enjoy 
what their ancestors have sown. The end of the seven- 
teenth century has a peculiar turn with us, a something 
of show and decadence, of luxury and want of morals ; 
and the same marks belong to it even in Japan. Indeed, 
I feel in all the Tokugawa splendor something not very 
old, something which reminds me that this was but the 
day of my own great-grandfather; a time of rest after 
turmoil, of established sovereigns on various scales, of 
full-bottomed wigs, of great courtliness, of great ex- 
penses in big and little Versailles. I miss the sense of 
antiquity, except as all true art connects with the past, 
as the Greek has explained when he said that the Par- 
thenon looked old the moment it was done. 

The temple of lyemitsu is, indeed, charming and of 
feminine beauty, complete, fitted into the shape of the 
mountain like jewels in a setting. From near the red 
pagoda of lyeyasu's grounds a wide avenue leads, all in 
shade, to an opening, narrowed up at its end to a wall 
and gate, which merely seem a natural entrance between 
the hills. There are great walls to the avenue, which 

87 



are embankments of the mountains. From them at in- 
tervals fountains splash into the torrents at each side, and 
overhead are the great trees and their thin vault of blue 
shade. The first gate is the usual roofed one, red, with 
gilded rafters and heavy black bronze tiles, and with two 
red muscular giants in the niches of the sides. Its rela- 
tive simplicity accentuates the loveliness of the first long 
court, which we enter on its narrowest side. Its borders 
seem all natural, made of nothing but the steep mountain 
sides, filled with varieties of leafage and the columns of 
the great cedars. These indeterminate edges give it the 
look of a valley shut at each end by the gate we have 
passed, and by another far off disguised by trees. This 
dell is paved in part, and with hidden care laid out with 
smaller trees. Down the steep hillside, a cascade trem- 
bles through emerald grass, part lost, part found again, 
from some place where, indistinct among the trees, the 
jaws of a great bronze dragon discharge its first waters, 
A simple trough collects one rill and sends it into the 
large stone cube of a tank, which it brims over and then 
disappears. 

The little pavilion over this well is the only building 
in the inclosure. It is more elegant than that of lye- 
yasu, with its twelve columns, three at each corner, slop- 
ing in more decidedly, their white stone shafts socketed 
in metal below and filleted with metal above, melting 
into the carved white architrave. In the same way the 
carvings and the blue and green and red and violet of the 
entablature melt in the reflections under the shadow of 
the heavy black-and-gold roof with four gables. From 
under the ceiHng, and hanging below the lintels, flutter 
many colored and patterned squares of cloth, memorials 
of recent pilgrims. 

As we turn to the highest side of the court on the left 
and ascend slowly steep, high steps to a gorgeous red 



gate above our heads, whose base we cannot see, the 
great cedars of the opposite side are the real monuments, 
and the little water-tank, upon which we now look down, 
seems nothing but a little altar at the foot of the moun- 





LOOKING DOWN ON THE WATER-TANK, OR SACRED FONT, 
FROM THE SECOND GATE. 



tain forest. The gate, when we look back, is only a 
frame, and its upper step only a balcony from which 
to look at the high picture of trees in shadow and sun- 
light across the narrow dell which we can only just feel 
beneath us. 

89 



The great red gate has two giant guardians of red and 
green, and innumerable bracketings for a cornice, all out- 
lined, and confused all the more by stripes of red and 
green and white and blue. 




A PRIEST AT lY^MITSU. 



Just behind the gate, as if it led to nothing, rises again 
the wall of the mountain; then we turn at right angles 

90 



toward a great esplanade, lost at its edges in trees, from 
which again the forest would be all the picture were it 
not that farther back upon the hill rises a high wall, with 
a platform and lofty steps, and the carved red-and-gold 
face of a cloister, with another still richer gate of a red 
lacquer, whose suffering by time has made it more rosy, 
more flower-hke. 

Up these steps we went, the distant trees of the moun- 
tains ascending with us, and we rested in the red-and-gold 
shade. Above us the gold brackets of the roof were re- 
flected back, in light and dark, upon the gold architrave, 
adorned by the great carved peonies, red and white, and 
great green leaves which stood out with deep undercut- 
ting. From the fluted red columns projected great golden 
tapirs' heads and paws, streaked with red like the bloom 
of tulips. The gilded metal sockets and joinings and the 
faint modeled reliefs of the wall, all of dull gold, looked 
green against the red lacquer. Beyond, the inner Hntel 
was green, like malachite, against the sunny green of the 
forest. Its chamfered edge reflected in gold the lights and 
shadows beyond, and against the same green trees stood 
out the long heads and trunks of the tapir capitals in red 
and gold. 

Through this framework of red and many-colored gold 
we passed into the inner court, made into a cloister by 
walls and narrow buildings, rich in red lacquer and black 
and gold. As before with lyeyasu, so also within this 
inclosure, is another raised upon a base faced with great 
blocks of granite, fretted, spotted, and splashed with white 
and purple Hchens. The sun-embroidered wall or fence 
that edges it is black with a bronze-and-gold roof; its 
trellises are of white, edged with gold ; as usual, bands of 
carved and colored ornament divide so as almost to pierce 
its face ; and its beams are capped with jointings of chiseled 
metal. The central gate spots joyously the long line of 

91 



black and gold and color and bronze, with imposts of 
white carving, framed in rosy lacquer, and with gold pil- 
lars and a gold lintel, upon which is spread a great white 
dragon, and with a high gold pediment, divided by recesses 
of golden ornament on ultramarine, and with golden doors 
fretted with a fairy filagree of golden ornament. 

Through this lovely gate, with an exquisite inlaid ceil- 
ing of pearl and gold and walls of carved and colored trel- 
lises, we pass to the main shrine, only just behind it. 

Here again, less pretense than with lyeyasu, and greater 
and more thoughtful elegance. The long white carved 
columns of the portico run straight up to the brackets of 
its roof— except where, to support the cross-beam of the 
transoms, project red lions' heads and paws, looking like 
great coral buds. The entire architrave of the building is 
divided into a succession of long friezes, stepping farther 
and farther out, like a cornice, until they meet the golden 
roof Only a few gold brackets support the highest golden 
beam — carvings, color, and delicate stampings of the lac- 
quer embroider the gold with a bloom of color. The gold 
doors look like jewelers' work in heavy filagree. 

All within was quiet, in a golden splendor. Through 
the small openings of the black-and-gold gratings a faint 
light from below left all the golden interior in a summer 
shade, within which glittered on lacquer tables the golden 
utensils of the Buddhist ceremonial. From the coffered 
ceiling hangs the metal baldachin, like a precious lantern's 
chain without a lamp. 

The faces of the priests who were there were known to 
us, the elder's anxious and earnest, the younger's recalling 
an Italian monsignore. One of them was reading by the 
uplifted grating and rose to greet us, and to help to ex- 
plain. We entered the narrow passage which makes the 
center, through whose returning walls project, in a curious 
refinement of invention, the golden eaves of the inner 

92 




IN THE THIRD GATE OF THE TEMPLE OF lYEMITSU, LOOKING TOWARD THE FOURTH^ 



building beyond. Gratings which were carved and gilded 
trellises of exquisite design gave a cool, uncertain light 
We passed out of a trellised door on to the black lac- 
quered floor of a veranda, and then sat awhile in a simple 
room with our hosts to look at temple manuscripts and 
treasures, and at the open palanquin which once brought 
here the dead lyemitsii — not reduced to ashes, as his 




grandfather lyeyasii, but wrapped and covered up in in- 
numerable layers of costly and preserving vermilion. We 
passed into the^ corridor behind the building and looked 
at the picture hanging on the wall, which faces the moun- 
tain and the tomb, in which Kuwan-on the Compassion- 
ate sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of 
life. Then for a few moments we entered by a low door 
the sanctuary, narrow and high and with pyramidal roof 

95 




KUWANON, BY OKIO. 



By the flickering torch which alone gave Hght, all 
seemed of gold — the wall, the columns which run up to 
the central golden roof, and the transoms which connect 

96 



them. In the darker shade stood a golden shrine, never 
opened. Whatever precious details there may be were 
bathed in a shade made of reflected gold. An exquisite 
feeling of gentle solemnity filled the place. We passed 
out suddenly into the glare of day and under the blazing 
blue sky, which hung over the inclosure of tall trees and 
the temple like the ceiling of a tent. 

Again a great wall, spotted with moss and lichens, is 
built around as an inclosure. It makes a base for the 
greater wall of the mountain rising above it, which is cov- 
ered with forest trees, as if the skirting of the wilderness 
of northern Japan were here suddenly Hmited. Across 
one single opening, on the one side, where show the 
seams of the immense cyclopean construction, and joining 
two corners, broken by great patches of the shadows of 
the gigantic trees, stretches a white wall, heavily roofed, 
against a shadow almost black. In its center is a strange, 
white gate-building, moundlike in shape, absolutely plain, 
but capped by a great roof, which is stretched out upon 
a mass of brackets, all of gold and colors, and with carved 
golden doors, whose central panels are all fretted and 
chiseled and stamped with the Wheel of the law. Here 
begin the distant steps leading through the trees to the 
tomb where lies the body of lyemitsu, cased in layers of 
vermilion, under golden bronze, like his grandfather 
lyeyasu, and surrounded by the still more solitary 
splendor of the forest. 

Astonishing as is the contrast to-day, in the abundance 
and glory of summer, of the bronze and the lacquered 
colors, and the golden carvings, with the wild rocks and 
trees, the grass and the mosses, I should like to see in 
the snow of winter this richness and glitter and warmth 
of red and white and black and gold. 

Can it bring out still more the lavishness of refine- 
ment, which wells up as if exhaustless ? Does its white 
7 97 



monotony and the dark of the great cedars make one feel 
still more the recklessness of this accumulation of gold 
and lacquer and carving and bronze, all as if unprotected 
and trusted to the chances of the recurring seasons ? 

As we repeat each look, on our slow return through 
the temples, the same elegance, the same refinement, the 
same indifference to the outrages of time, contrast again 
with the permanence and the forces of nature. With the 
fatigue and repetition of the innumerable beauties of gold 
and color, carving and bronze, the sense of an exquisite 
art brings the indefinable sadness that belongs to it, a feel- 
ing of humility and of the nothingness of man. Nowhere 
can this teaching be clearer than in this place of the 
tombs. It is as if they said, serenely or splendidly, in 
color and carving and bronze and gold : *' We are the 
end of the limits of human endeavor. Beyond us begins 
the other world, and we, indeed, shall surely pass away, 
but thou remainest, O Eternal Beauty ! " 



98 



TAO: THE WAY 

NiKKO, July 28. 

OSOMI and Tategawa were the architects of Nikko; 
Osomi planned the lovely pagoda, — so I am told, 
— and I hasten to put down their names. At that time 
the great Tenkai was abbot. He was a friend and ad- 
viser of lyeyasu, as he was the teacher of lyemitsu, the 
grandson, and of Hidetada, the less illustrious son. It 
may be with him that lyeyasu arranged the plan of fixed 
endowment for the Church ; an endowment not to be 
added to or diminished, so that it should be an element 
of stabihty and no longer a fluctuating danger. With 
this seems to have ended the possible reasons for military 
dependents in the service of the Church. 

Tenkai is said to have planned or prepared beforehand 
the temples of lyeyasii, which might explain the extremely 
short time given in the record for their building; so that, 
begun in 1616, the stable, the surrounding edifices, and 
the shrine were completed in the third month of 161 7. 

I have been careful to give you some account of the 
temples of lyeyasil and lyemitsii, because I regret having 
said so Httle of those temples of Shiba in Tokio, where the 
remainder of the Tokugawa rulers repose in a state 
adorned by similar splendors. But these temples of the 
founders are of a more complete type, and, with one ex- 
ception, seem to me more impressive. Yet even with the 
beauties that I have tried to describe, I am still not quite 
so carried away as I might have been by such complete 
works of art. There is a something, a seeming of pre- 

99 



tense or e'ffort or ingeniousness, which I cannot seize, but 
which seems to me to belong to a splendor not quite se- 
cure, or perhaps only just secured, — something like what I 
might call the mark of the parvenu. 

Yes; I think that is it. It is still, after all this time, 
just a little new. But what thorough adaptation of means 
to ends ; how delicately subtle the arrangements, and 
simple ; and how impossible to describe through words or 
drawings. How the result alone is aimed at, and what 
little parade is made of the intention and preparation. 
This work, which seems to betray an inferiority to its own 
ideal — this work, which has even a touch of the vulgar, 
is charming enough to look like a fairyland. It displays 
a capacity for arrangement which none of us to-day could 
hope to control ; has a charm that any passer-by could 
feel ; has more details of beauty than all our architects 
now living, all together, could dream of accomplishing in 
the longest life. When I began to reflect how this wood 
and plaster had more of the dignity of art and of its ac- 
cessible beauty than all that we have at home, if melted 
together, would result in; that these frail materials con- 
veyed to the mind more of the eternal than our granite, 
it seemed to me that something was absolutely wrong 
with us. 

And the cause of this result was not the splendor of 
line and color ; it was not the refinement. The last time 
I could recall a similar sensation had been before some 
little church tower of England ; it was certainly the sub- 
ordination of all means to a single end, and their disap- 
pearance in one impression. 

. . . Since my first visit to the temples my mind has 
been dwelling more and more in an involuntary manner 
upon the contrast with all modern art, and I venture to 
note down for you some of the thoughts forced upon me. 
It seems as if I were really reminded of what I always 



knew, or ought to have known ; and perhaps what I may 
say about ourselves is as good a way as any other of giv- 
ing an opinion upon what I see here. For, indeed, what 
I see here that I admire I feel as though I had always 
known, had already seen; it is rather most of our own 
that seems queer, strange, and often unreasonable. 

I can make no set and orderly arrangement of my 
rather confused thinking, but can only trace it out as it 
occurred to me — as if it were from outside; as if some- 
thing whispered to me now and then out of small occur- 
rences, and said, ''Don't you understand more clearly?" 

. . . On leaving the temples we went back to our 
friends' house, which was once the residence of the re- 
gent of Japan — a large, low wooden building of the kind 
so carefully described by Mr. Morse in his book. All is 
extremely simple ; there is nothing to call any attention. 
The woodwork is merely put together with great care ; 
some little panels of the closets are nicely trimmed with 
metal and highly ornamented. This, with metal nail- 
heads and a pretty wall-paper, is all the decoration. 

Here we found the mail and papers, and enjoyed the 
watering-place feeling of news from town. There were 
copies of ''Life" and of the London "Punch," many of 
whose drawings did not look out of place in this land of 
clever sketchers. Indeed, that in them which once seemed 
good across the seas still held its own in presence of the 
little prodigies of technique that one meets in Japanese 
drawings. 

Indeed, they recalled one another. Both call out one's 
sudden recollection of some facts in nature ; and besides, 
all good sketches resemble one another as being the 
nearest approach to the highest finished work. They 
have in common with it the essential merit of being bet- 
ter than they appear, of indicating more than is necessary 
to tell the tale, of not being strictly measurable quantities. 

7* lOI 



We grow so ungrateful when too well treated that we 
forget how Mr. Du Maurier throws in, over and above 
the social epigram in lines, an elegance and grace that 
might belong to a poetic picture ; that Mr. Keene tells 
his story over and over again in the very folds of each in- 
dividual's dress ; that he will, unconcernedly, present us 
with a landscape as full of nature as his human figures, 
instead of the indifferent background which would have 
been sufficient for the story of the caricaturist. Now, the 
feeling of disenchantment, of having *' found out " appear- 
ances, of having come to the end of a thing, is never for- 
given by the average healthy mind. In greater things 
one turns, some day, to those which are always richer and 
fuller of meaning with time, — as one looks to-day at a 
Corot or a Delacroix or a Millet once uncared-for, — and 
that means that at length our eyes are opened. The 
sketch, like the great work of art, is better than it ap- 
pears, and recalls to me the emperor in the story, whom 
the old woman could not recognize in the presence of the 
big drum- major. We can appreciate what suffering the 
little old woman underwent when she discovered her mis- 
take, and how she never forgave the big drum-major. 
For mankind has never believed at heart that the work 
itself is to be judged, but has always (at least in the case 
of one's neighbor) acknowledged that it is the work of art 
which judges us. 

So says a Japanese friend, and I think that he has it 
exactly. Hence an importance attaches to criticism which 
otherwise would be inexplainable, — the importance there 
is in being right, — because we shall be judged ourselves if 
we are wrong, and often by ourselves as judges. 

. . . And late numbers of the magazines had come, 
pleasant to look over before dinner, — while the noiseless 
servants glided over the matting, and our hostess put 
on her Japanese costume, — serving to make the distance 



greater, as we feel that all goes on at home with the usual 
regularity. 

Some architectural sketches in facsimile in a magazine 
became entangled with the thread of my thinking and 
brought to my mind an inevitable lesson. 

They were charming, and so different from the realities 
which they were meant to embody. One I dwelt upon, 
bright and clever, where every dark of window or of 
shadow intensified the joyfulness of the white wall of a 
residence at home, which you daily pass. In the reality, 
alas ! its Fifth Avenue monotony is unrelieved. The wall 
is not bright, the windows are paler than the walls, and 
the projections and adornment are duller yet. The draw- 
ing was an abstraction, probably meant for the sweet en- 
ticement of the client, and was what the building should 
have been. The draughtsman '' knew better than he 
builded." As my mind analyzed this curious profes- 
sional misstatement of truth, it seemed to me that I could 
see how the art of architecture in Japan was real com- 
pared to ours, even though none of their architects, any 
more than those of the great past of the world, could have 
made such a drawing — such a brilliant promise of a per- 
formance not to be, such a beautifully engraved check 
upon a bank where there were no funds. Not knowing 
the science and art of perspective drawing, nor the power 
of representing shadows according to rule, nor having the 
habit of ruling lines with a ruler to give interest, nor of 
throwing little witty accents of dark to fill up blanks, they 
were perhaps the more obliged to concentrate their powers 
upon the end of the work ; and their real motive was the 
work itself. 

This may be strange and contradictory to the modern 
Western mind, gradually accustomed to polished cartoons 
for bad paintings and worse glass, to remarkable designs 
for decoration and architecture which look their best in 

103 



woodcuts, to great decorative paintings which are carried 
out so that they may be photographed without any injury 
to their color, nay, to its vast improvement. Do you re- 
member how B , the famous sculptor, used to preach 

to me that to-day no one looked at a thing itself, no one 
expected to, and that the fame of the artist was for those 
whose work could be adequately represented in the news- 
papers. That an excellence which could not be duph- 
cated, that a tone which could no be matched, that a line 
which could not be copied, was not to be appreciated 
and could not be cared for. In fact, that such refine- 
ments were only worthy of the mind of an Oriental, *' of 
a man accustomed to wear the moon embroidered on 
his back." Why spend days in obtaining the color of 
a wall which any architect will think can be adequately 
replaced by his description of something like it to the 
painting firm around the corner ? Why make the thing 
itself, if something like it will do as well ? Why strike the 
note exactly, if any sound near it satisfies the average 
ear ? For us, to-day, things and realities no longer exist. 
It is in their descriptions that we believe. Even in most 
cultivated France an architect or designer like Viollet-le- 
Duc will seriously undertake to restore old work, every 
square inch of which has had the patient toil of souls full 
of love and desire of the best, by rubbing it all out, and 
making a paper drawing or literary description for others 
to restore again in a few modern weeks the value of an- 
cient years of ineffably intelligent care. Consider this 
impossibility of getting a decent restoration carried out 
by our best intelligences, and note that while they are un- 
able with all money and talk and book-learning to replace 
the past in a way that can deceive us, there exist patient, 
obscure workmen who, beginning at the other end of the 
work, produce little marvels of deception in false antiqui- 
ties — purchased by museums and amateurs for sums their 

104 



authors never could get in their proper name. But these 
latter have only one object, the thing itself, and are judged 
by the result ; while we, the arbiters and directors better 
known, who never employ them, are satisfied, and satisfy 
others by our having filed in the archives of to-day no- 
tices that we are going to do something in the utterly 
correct way. I took as an example our friend VioUet-le- 
Duc, the remarkable architect whose works we have both 
studied, because he has written well, — in some ways, no 
one more acutely and more wisely; because of his real 
learning, and on account of his very great experience. 
Is all that this man and his pupils did in their own art of 
making, worth, as art, the broken carving that I kick 
to-day out of my path ? 

Has such a risible calamity ever occurred before in 
any age ? Destruction there has been, replacing of old, 
good work with better or with worse by people who did 
not understand, or care, or pretend to care ; but the re- 
placing of good with bad by people who do understand, 
and who claim to care, has never been a curse until to- 
day. This failure in all restoration, in all doing of the 
thing itself, must be directly connected with our pedantic 
education and with our belief in convenient appliances, 
in propositions, in labor-saving classifications, in action 
on paper, in projects for future work, in soul-saving the- 
ories and beliefs — -in anything except being saved by the 
— work itself. 

Indeed, I have always felt that perhaps in the case of 
poor Richardson, just dead, we may begin to see the 
shape of an exception, and can realize what can be ac- 
complished through what we called deficiencies. He was 
obliged, in the first place, to throw overboard in dealing 
with new problems all his educational recipes learned in 
other countries. Then, do you think that if he had drawn 
charming drawings beforehand he would have been able to 

105 



change them, to keep his building in hand, as so much 
plastic material ? No; the very tenacity needed for car- 
rying out anything large would have forced him to re- 
spect his own wish once finally expressed, while the careful 
studies of his assistants were only a ground to inquire into, 
and, lastly, to choose from. 

For many little prettinesses and perfections do not 
make a great unity. Through my mind passes the remin- 
iscence of something I have just been reading, the words 
of an old Chinese writer, an expounder of Tao (the Way), 
who said what he thought of such matters some twenty- 
five centuries ago. What he said runs somewhat in this 
way : 

The snake hissed at the wind, saying : " I at least have a 
form, but you are neither this nor that, and you blow roughly 
through the world, blustering from the seas of the north to the 
seas of the south." 

"It is true," replied the wind, "that I blow roughly, as you 
say, and that I am inferior to those that point or kick at me, in 
that I cannot do the same to them. On the other hand, I blow 
strongly and fill the air, and I can break huge trees and destroy 
large buildings. Out of 7na?ty small things in which I do not 
excel 1 7nake one great one in which I do excels 

In the domains of the One there may not be managing. 

Hence, also, the difficulty, I had almost said the im- 
possibility, of finding a designer to-day capable of making 
a monument: say, for instance, a tomb, or a commem- 
orative, ideal building — a cathedral, or a little mem- 
orial. There is no necessity in such forms of art, nothing 
to call into play the energies devoted to usefulness, to 
getting on, to adaptation, to cleverness, which the same 
Taoist says is the way of man, while integrity is the 
way of God. 

io6 



Art alone, pure, by itself, can be here the object of the 
maker's contemplation ; the laws of the universe that men 
call beauty are the true and only sufficient materials 
of construction. 

With what preparation does a designer of humbugs 
come to such work, failure in which cannot be excused 
because of any practical reasons, because of any pressing 
necessities — that really belongs to the public, to every- 
body more than to its possessor, or to its owner, or to 
those who have paid for it^ — that, finally, can be saved 
from adverse criticism only for a short time, while pass- 
ing interests are concerned. 

Who knows this better than yourself? Where on 
earth to-day can you find a thing done by us designers 
that an artist will go to look at for love, for the deep de- 
sire of enjoyment which makes us visit so many httle 
things of the past, and go far for them ? If you can, 
imagine any painter desiring to note, so as to make them 
his own by copy, a modern set of moldings, the corner 
of a modern building. 

And yet what a rush of delight comes upon us with a 
few Greek moldings, with a fragment of Greek or Gothic 
ornament, with the mere look of the walls of some good 
old building. How the pleasure and the emotions of 
those who made them have been built into them, and are 
reflected back to us, like the smile from a human face. 
I know that I have told you often how the fragment of a 
Gothic window from old English Boston set into the 
cloister of Trinity of the new Boston always seemed to 
me to outweigh the entire building in which it rests. 
And yet it is only a poor fragment of no great period. 
But then the makers thought and felt in the materials 
that they worked in, even if their drawings were rude 
and incomplete and often incorrect. And no architect 
seems to realize to-day that his walls could give us the 

107 



same emotions that we receive from a Rembrandt, or a 
Van Eyck, or a Veronese, and for the same reasons, and 
through a similar use of a real technique. 

You draw well; you can make a sketch, I am sure, 
which, like many others, would have spots of light on a 
black surface, or a pretty wash of sky above it, or little 
patches of shadow, like clever lichens, spread over it, and 
that would be correct in artificial perspective, and recall 
something of older design, and have no great blemishes 
to take hold of How far would it help you to have 
made a million such if you seriously wished to do a thing 
for itself, not for its effects upon a cHent, nor for a claim 
upon the public, nor for a salve to your own vanity ? 

And now do you see how, as w^e architects and de- 
signers gradually w^ork more and more on paper and not 
in the real, our energies are worked out in accomplishing 
before we get to our real work, — that of buildijtg a work 
of art, — and the result of our drawings grows feebler 
and feebler and tamer as it presses to its end. Then, for 
this weak frame of conception, the men who have come 
in to help (and that only because the director's time 
would not admit of his doing all himself, otherwise he 
would, in his jealous weakness, adorn as poorly as he 
imagines) — then, I say, if the painter, the sculptor, the 
decorator, shows any strength or power, there is another 
danger. There is danger that the sculptor's relief will be 
more powerful than the weak projections of solid ma- 
sonry, — that the Hues of the painter will be grander and 
more ample than those which were meant to guide and 
confine them — that the paint of the decorator will ap- 
pear more m.assive and more supporting than the walls 
of the architect. Whence all will be tamed, all annulled 
and made worthless and paltry, so as not to disturb the 
weak efforts of the master directing. And for the first 
time in the history of art we shall have buildings which 

io8 



the Greek or the Roman, the Medieval or the Oriental,, 
would have been unable to adorn, while in their times 
the masters who were architects, great and small, found 
no trouble in placing within their buildings, made fam- 
ous to all time by this choice, the sculptures of the Parthe- 
non or of Olympia, the glass or the statues of Christian 
cathedrals, or the carvings of India or of Japan. 

So that when the greatest painter of the century left 
instructions for his tomb, he asked that it should be cop- 
ied from some former one of antiquity or renaissance, so 
that it might have — to typify his love and his dishkes — 
masculine moldings and a manly character, contrary, as 
he said, *' to all that is done to-day in architecture." 

You may say that through all this wandering of thought 
I am telling you little about Japanese art. Wait ; perhaps I 
may be merely preparing your mind and mine for what I 
shall have to say later. Or, rather, let us think that I am 
carried away by the spirit, and that I am certainly talking 
of what I do not find here ; and if there is no novelty in 
what I say, and that you know it, and have always known 
it, we shall come back to what you also know, that art is 
the same everywhere and always, and that I need not 
come this distance to learn its principles. If there is 
anything good here, it must resemble some of the good 
that we have with us. But here at least I am freer, de- 
livered from a world of canting phrases, of perverted 
thought, which I am obliged to breathe in at home so as 
to be stained by them. Whatever pedantry may be here, 
I have not had to live with it, and I bear no responsibility 
in its existence. And then again, art here seems to be a 
common possession, has not been apparently separated 
from the masses, from the original feeling of mankind. 

To-day at dinner, Kato, who was waiting upon us, 
could give his opinion upon the authenticity of some 
old master's work, at the request of our host, himself a 

109 



great authority ; so that I could continue my dreaming 
through the conversation and the semi-European courses, 
marked by my first acquaintance with the taste of bam- 
boo shoots — a Httle dehcacy sent in by A-chin, the chil- 
dren's nurse. 

Much was talked of the Tokugawa race, and some 
cruelty was shown to their memory as a family of par- 
venus who had usurped the power theoretically invested 
in the mikados — an usurpation practised over and over 
again by every successful shogun, as by Yoritomo, Tai- 
kosama. Indeed, the Ashikaga move through Japanese 
history against a background of mikados. And when 

O comes in later he talks of Masashige, and of 

others, who during centuries, at long intervals, attempted 
to realize what has now been accomplished — the restora- 
tion of the mikado to his ancient powers and rulership of 
twenty centuries ago. 

Yes, the Tokugawa splendor was that of parvenus. 
Their half-divine masters lie in no gilded shrines nor un- 
der monumental bronze, but buried beneath the elements, 
their graves marked only by mounds or trees, as it might 
have been with their earliest ancestors, the peaceful chief- 
tains of a primitive family : a simplicity recalled to-day 
by the little fragment of dried fish that accompanies pres- 
ents, in memory of the original humility of the fishing 
tribes, the ancestors of this almost over-cultivated race. 

These Tokugawa, then, were parvenus, and naturally 
asked of art, which lasts and has lasted and is to last, an 
affirmation of their new departure. This splendor was 
made for them, and its delicious refinement has not quite 
escaped that something which troubled me at Shiba — 
an anxiety that all should be splendid and perfect, an un- 
wiUingness to take anything for granted. And yet, by 
comparison, this looks like a fairyland of refinement. 
What should we do when called to help a new man to 



assist or to sweeten his acquired position ? What vulgar- 
ity of vulgarities should we produce ? Think of the pre- 
posterous dwellings, the vulgar adornments given to the 
rich ; the second-hand clothing in which newly acquired 
power is wrapped. The English cad, and the Frenchman 
not good enough for home, put the finishing touch upon 
the proofs of culture which are to represent them to their 
children. 

I need not refer to what is seen in San Francisco as an 
example. At home in New York we have more than 
are pleasant to think of. I know that some may say that 
we have only what we deserve for thinking that we can 
escape, in the laws that govern art, the rules that we have 
found to hold in everything else. 

Some years ago I told you how once a purveyor of 
decorations for the millionaire, a great man in his line, 
explained to me how and why he had met his clients 
half-way. *' You despise my work," he said, " though 
you are too polite to say so," — for we were friendly in a 
manner, — " and yet I can say that I am more thoroughly 
in the right than those who would seek to give these men 
an artistic clothing fit for princes. Is there anything 
more certain than that the artist represents his age, and 
is all the greater for embodying it. Now that is what I 
do. You will say that my work is not deeply consid- 
ered, though it is extremely careful in execution ; that its 
aims are not high ; that it is not sober ; that it is showy, 
perhaps even more; that it is loud occasionally — when it 
is not tame ; that it shows for all it is worth, and is never 
better than it looks. And who, pray, are the people that 
live surrounded by what I make ? Are they not repre- 
sented by what I do ? Do they not want show of such a 
kind as can be easily understood, refinement that shall 
not remind others of a refinement greater than theirs, 
money spent largely, but showing for every dollar? They 



want everything quick, because they have always been in 
a hurry ; they want it on time, whatever happens, be- 
cause they are accustomed to time bargains; they want 
it advertisable, because they Hve by advertising ; and they 
gradually believe in the value of the pretenses they have 
made to others. They are not troubled by what they 
feel is transient, because their experience has been to pass 
on to others the things they preferred not to keep. They 
feel suspicious of anything that claims or seems to be 
better than it looks; is not their business to sell dearer 
than they buy ? They must not be singular, because they 
must fit into some place already occupied. 

'' I claim to have fully expressed all this of them in 
what I do, and I care little for the envious contempt of 
the architects who have to employ me and who would like 
to have my place and wield my influence. And so I reflect 
my clients, and my art will have given what they are." 

Thus the great German rolled out his mind with the 
Teutonic delight at giving an appearance of pure intellect 
to the interested working of his will — incidentally sneer- 
ing at the peacock feathers, the sad-eyed dados, the pov- 
erty-stricken sentimentality, half esthetic, half shopkeeper, 
of his English rivals, or at the blunders in art which Mr. 
Stanford White once called our " native Hottentot style." 

Of course my German was merely using a current 
sophistry that is only worth quoting to emphasize the 
truth. 

Augustus, the greatest of all parvenus, did not ask of 
Virgil to recall in verse the cruelties of civil war. No true 
artist has ever sought to be degraded ; no worker of the 
Middle Ages has reflected the brutality of the world 
around him. On the contrary, he has appealed to its 
chivalry and its religion. No treacherous adventurer of 
the Renaissance is pictured in the sunny, refined architec- 
ture that was made for him. You and I know that art is 



not the attempt at reflecting others, at taking possession 
of others, who belong to themselves ; but that it is an at- 
tempt at keeping possession of one's self It is often a 
protest at what is displeasing and mean about us; it is an 
appeal to what is better. That is its most real value. It 
is an appeal to peace in time of brutal war, an appeal to 
courageous war in time of ignoble peace; it is an appeal 
to the permanent reality in presence of the transient; it 
is an attempt to rest for a moment in the true way. 

We are augurs conversing together, and we can afford 
to laugh at any respected absurdity. We know that clev- 
erness is not the way to the reality; cleverness is only 
man's weak substitute for integrity, which is from God. 

All these words — miscalled ideas — poured out by my 
German friend and his congeners are merely records of 
merchants' ways of looking at the use of a thing, not at 
the thing itself. Such people are persuaded that they 
must surely know about the thing they sell or furnish. If 
not they, then who ? For none can be so impartial, as 
none are so disinterested, in the use of the thing sold. 

It is too far back for you to remember the charming 
Blanco, the great slave-dealer, but you may have heard 
of his saying, which covers the side of the dealer. He 
had been asked why he felt so secure in his judgment of 
his fellow- creatures, and especially of women. ** Because," 
said he, **I have traded in so many" — T en ai tant vendu. 
I have sometimes quoted this saying to dealers in works 
of art, to dealers in knowledge about art, without, how- 
ever, any success in pleasing them. In fact, one has no 
judgment of one's own in regard to anything sold that is 
not a matter of utility until one feels quite thoroughly, as 
if it were one's own, the sense of Talleyrand's treatment 
of the persuasive dealer. I am sure that you do not know 
the story. Two friends of his, ladies of rank, had chosen 
his study as a place of meeting. They wished to select 
8 113 



some ring, some bracelet, for a gift, and the great jeweler 
of Paris was to send one of his salesmen with sufficient to 
choose from. Of course the choice was soon limited to 
two, and there paused, until Talleyrand, sitting at the 
farther end of the long library, called out, " Let me un- 
dertake to help you to make your decision. Young man, 
of these two trinkets tell me which you prefer." "This 
one, certainly, your Excellency." *' Then," ended the 
experienced cynic, "please accept it for your sweetheart; 
and I think, ladies, that you had better take the other." 
I tell you anecdotes ; are they not as good as reasons ? 

Listen to what my Chinese writer says: "Of language 
put into other people's mouths, nine-tenths will succeed. 
Of language based upon weighty authority, seven-tenths. 
But language which flows constantly over, as from a full 
goblet, is in accord with God. When language is put 
into other people's mouths, outside support is sought. 
Just as a father does not negotiate his son's marriage, for 
any praise he could bestow would not have the same 
value as praise by an outsider. Thus the fault is not 
mine, but that of others, who would not believe me as the 
original speaker." Again, a story of China comes back to 
me, told by the same writer, who lived before our purer 
era, and who was, as a Japanese friend remarks, a strate- 
gist in thought, fond of side attacks, of presenting some 
point apparently anecdotic and unimportant, which, once 
listened to, turns the truthful mind into channels of fresh 
inquiry. The anecdote is old, told by the old writer many 
centuries before Christ, and before any reflections about 
art troubled our barbarian minds. 

It is about a court architect who flourished in celebrity 
some twenty-seven centuries ago, and who answered ad- 
miring queries as to how he did such wonderful things. 
"There is nothing supernatural about it," he said, "I 
first free my mind and preserve my vitality — my depen- 
dence upon God, Then, after a few days, the question of 

114 



how much money I shall make disappears ; a few more 
days, and I forget fame and the court whose architect I 
am ; another day or so, and I think only of THE THING 
ITSELF. Then I am ready to go into the forest " — the ar- 
chitect and the carpenter were one then — *^ whose wood 
must contain the form I shall seek. As you see, there is 
nothing supernatural about it." 

Twenty-seven centuries ago the formula of all good 
work was the same as it has been since. This looking 
for " the thing itself," not for the formula to control it, 
enabled men who were great and men who were little, far 
down toward us, far down into the times of the Renais- 
sance (until pedantry and night covered human freedom 
and integrity), to be painters or poets, sculptors or archi- 
tects, as the occasion required, to the astonishment of our 
narrowed, specialized vision of the last two hundred years. 

Again, if I have not put it clearly enough in this story 
of the far East, let me add another, which includes the 
meaning of the first. You will forgive it in honor of the 
genius loci, for these writings of the Chinese philosophers 
form a staple of conversation and discussion in social 
gatherings of cultivated people here. The story is of the 
greatest of Chinese rulers, the '' Yellow Emperor " of some 
forty-seven centuries ago. He was in pursuit of that law 
of things, that sufficient ideal which is called '* Tao" ('' the 
Way "), and he sought it in the wilds beyond the world 
known of China, in the fabulous mountains of Chu-tzu. 
He was accompanied by Ch'ang Yu and Chang Jo, and 
others of whom I know nothing; and Fang Ming, of 
whom I know nothing also, was their charioteer. When 
they had reached the outside wilderness these seven sages 
lost their way. By and by they fell in with a boy who 
was tending horses, and they asked him if he knew the 
Chu-tzu Mountains. ''I do," said the boy. "And can 
you tell us," said the sages, "where Tao, the law, abides?" 
" I can," replied the boy. " This is strange," said the 

"5 



Yellow Emperor. "Pray tell me how would you govern 
the empire ? " 

"I should govern the empire," replied the boy, "in the 
same way that I tend my horses. What else should I 
do ? When I was a little boy and lived within the points 
of the compass my eyes grew dim. An old man advised 
me to visit the wilderness outside of the world. My sight 
is now better, and I continue to dwell outside of the points 
of the compass. I should govern the empire in the same 
way. What else should I do ? " 

Said the Yellow Emperor, " Government is not your 
trade, but I should be glad to learn what you would do." 
The boy refused to answer, but being urged again, said : 
" What difference is there between governing the empire 
and looking after horses? See that no harm comes to 
the horses; that is all." 

Thereupon the emperor prostrated himself before the 
boy; and calling him divine teacher, took his leave. 

I am writing these vagaries by the sound of the water- 
fall in our garden ; half of the amados are closed ; the pa- 
per screens near me I have left open, and the moths and 
insects of the night flutter around my lamp in orbits as 
uncertain as the direction of my thoughts. I have given 
up my drawing ; it is too hot to work. And I have al- 
ready tired myself with looking over prints and designs. 
Among them there is a sketch by Hokusai which reminds 
me of the way in which my mind bestrides stray fancies 
that float past. The picture is that of Tekkai (the beg- 
gar), the Sennin exhaling his spiritual essence in a sha- 
dowy form, which shadow itself often rides away upon 
the spirit horse that Chokwaro or Tsuga evokes occasion- 
ally from his traveHng-gourd. 

To-day we talked of the legends of these Rishi or Sen- 
nin, whose pictures so often com.e up in the works of 
Japanese artists. 

. ii6 



Rishi or Sennin are beings who enjoy rest, — that is to 
say, are exempt from transmigration, — often in the soH- 
tude of mountains for thousands of years, after which de- 
lay they again enter the circle of change. If they are 
merely human, as many of them are, they have obtained 
this charm of immortaHty, which forms an important point 
in the superstitious beliefs and practices of modern Tao- 
ism. These appear to have no hold in Japan, as they 
have in China, but these personages, evolutions of Taoist 
thought, live here at least in legend and in art. 

The original mysticism from which they sprung is full 
of beauty and of power. General Tcheng-ki-tong has 
recently stated it well, when he says that Lao Tzii, its 
great antique propounder, speaks with the tone of a 
prophet. He neither preached nor discussed, yet those 
who went to him empty departed full. He taught the 
doctrine which does not find expression in words, the 
doctrine of Tao, or the Way — a doctrine that becomes 
untrue and unprofitable when placed in set forms and 
bound in by pedantry, but which allows teaching by par- 
ables and side glimpses and innuendoes as long as they 
are illuminated by that light which exists in the natural 
heart of man. And I, too, am pleased to let myself be 
guided by this light. After many years of wilful energy, 
of forced battle that I have not shunned, I like to try the 
freshness of the springs, to see if new impressions come as 
they once did in childhood. With you I am safe in stat- 
ing what has come to me from outside. It has come; 
hence it is true : I did not make it. I can say with the 
Shadow, personified by my expounder of the Way,^ that 



1 Pr^maie's *' Notitia Linguae Sinicae," "4um exemplum. Sic inducit 
Tchouang-tsee umbram loquentem : Ego quidem existo, sed nescio qua rati- 
one. Ego sum veluti cicadarum tunicse et Serpentis spolia," etc. If what I 
have written is ever seen by H. B. M.'s consul at Tamsui, he will perceive 
my present indebtedness to his most admirable translations. 
8* 117 



when the light of the fire or the sun appears, then I come 
forth ; when the night comes, I he still : I wait indeed, 
even as they wait. They come and I come, they go and 
I go too. The shade waits for the body and for the light 
to appear, and all things which rise and wait wait upon 
the Lord, who alone waits for nothing, needs nothing, and 
without whom things can neither rise nor set. The radi- 
ance of the landscape illuminates my room ; the land- 
scape does not come within. I have become as a blank 
to be filled. I employ my mind as a mirror ; it grasps 
nothing, it refuses nothing ; it receives, but does not keep. 
And thus I can triumph over things without injury to 
myself — I am safe in Tao. 



ii8 



JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE 

NiKKO, August 2. 

I FEAR that of all my description the refrain of the 
words gold and bronze will be all that you will retain. 
How can I have any confidence in my account of any- 
thing so alien, whose analysis involves the necessary 
misuse of our terms, based upon another past in art? — 
for words in such cases are only explanations or easy 
mnemonics of a previous sight. But soon I shall have 
photographs to send, and if I can summon courage for 
w^ork, in this extreme heat and moisture, I shall make 
some drawings. But again, these would not give the 
essential reasons for things being as they are ; and what- 
ever strange beauties would be noted, they might appear 
to have happened, if I may so say, and not to have grown 
of necessity. It is so difficult for our average way of 
accepting things to think of what is called architecture 
without expecting structures of stone — something solid 
and evidently time- defying. 

And yet, if architecture represents the needs of living 
of a people, the differences that we see here will have the 
same reasonableness that other devices show elsewhere. 
The extreme heat, the sudden torrents of rain, will ex- 
plain the far-projecting and curved roofs, the galleries 
and verandas, the arrangements for opening or closing 
the sides of buildings by sliding screens, which allow an 
adjustment to the heat or the damp. But weightier 
reasons than all these must have directed in the construc- 
tion of such great buildings as the temples, and I think 

119 



that, putting aside important race influences, these suffi- 
cient reasons will be found in the volcanic nature of 
Japan and its frequent earthquakes. Whatever was to 
be built must have had to meet these difficult problems: 
how successfully in the past is shown by a persistence of 
their buildings which to us seems extraordinary, for 
many of them are lasting yet in integrity for now over a 
thousand years. 

I speak of the influences of race, because it is evident 
that very many traditions, prejudices, and symbolic mean- 
ings are built into these forms, and that many of them 
must have come through the teachings of China. Every- 
where the higher architecture, embodied in shrines and 
temples, is based on some ideal needs, and not essentially 
upon necessities; is, in fact, a record or expression of a 
religious idea or mystery. In this case I am too pro- 
foundly ignorant, as most of us are, to work out origins; 
but my mind feels the suggestion of an indefinite past, 
that once had meanings and teachings, just as my eye 
recognizes in the shape of the massive temples the image 
of a sacred box, or ark, once to be carried from place to 
place. There is, perhaps, in this direction a line of study 
for the men to come. 

Like all true art, the architecture of Japan has found 
in the necessities imposed upon it the motives for realiz- 
ing beauty, and has adorned the means by which it has 
conquered the difficulties to be surmounted. Hence no 
foundations, which would compromise the super-imposed 
building by making it participate in the shock given to 
its base. Hence solid pedestals, if I may so call them, or 
great bases, upon which are placed only, not built in, the 
posts which support the edifice, leaving a space between 
this base and the horizontal beams or floors of the build- 
ing. The building is thus rendered elastic, and resumes 
its place after the trembling of the earthquake, and the 



waters of bad weather can escape without flooding any 
foundations. 

The great, heavy, curved roof, far overhanging, weighs 
down this structure, and keeps it straight. An appar- 
ently unreasonable quantity of adjusted timber and beams 
supports the ceiling and the roof. Complicated, tremen- 
dous corbelings, brackets grooved and dovetailed, fill the 
cornices as with a network; but all these play an im- 
portant practical part, and keep the whole construction 
elastic, as their many small divisions spread the shock. 

Still more, in such a building as the charming pagoda 
at lyeyasil's shrine, which is full one hundred feet high, 
slight-looking and lithe, the great beam or mast which 
makes its center does not support from the base, but is 
cut off at the foundation; and hence it acts as a sort of 
pendulum, its great weight below retarding the move- 
ment above when the earthquake comes. 

I have heard the whisper of a legend saying that the 
architect who devised this, to correct the errors of a rival 
and partner^ was poisoned in due time, in jealous return. 
For those were happy times when backbiting among 
artists took the more manly form of poisoning. 

Now besides all this, which gives only the reason for 
the make of certain parts which together form the unity 
of a single building, there are other principles before us. 
The relation of man to nature, so peculiarly made out in 
the Japanese beliefs, is made significant, symbolized, or 
typified through the manner in which these buildings are 
disposed. A temple is not a single unity, as with us, its 
own beginning and end. A temple is an arrangement 
of shrines and buildings meaningly placed, often, as here, 
in mountains — a word synonymous with temples; each 
shrine a statement of some divine attribute, and all these 
buildings spread with infinite art over large spaces, open, 
or inclosed by trees and rocks. The buildings are but 

121 



parts of a whole. They are enveloped by nature, the 
principle and the adornment of the subtle or mysterious 
meaning which Hnks them all together. 

Besides all this is the religious symbolism underlying 
or accompanying all, as once with us, of which I know too 
little to speak, but which can be felt and occasionally de- 
tected because of many repetitions. But this would carry 
me beyond my limits; and, indeed, we find it very difficult 
to obtain any more information from our instructors, 
whether they do not know securely, or whether they re- 
serve it for better minds and worthier apprehensions. Nor 
do I object to this Oriental secrecy or mystery, as it adds 
the charm of the veil, which is often needed. 

And I should wish that soon some one might under- 
take to make out in full the harmony of proportions which 
has presided over these buildings. It is evident that a 
delicate and probably minute system of relations, under 
the appearance of fantasy, produces here the sense of 
unity that alone makes one secure of permanent enjoy- 
ment. My information on the subject is fragmentary : I 
know that the elegant columns are in a set relation to the 
openings of the temple; that the shape of these same col- 
umns is in another relation to their exquisite details ; that 
the rafters play an important part, determining the first 
departure. I have seen carpenter's drawings, with man- 
ners of setting out work and measurements, and I feel 
that there is only a study to carry out. 

Nor is my wish mere curiosity, or the interest of the 
antiquarian. What we need to-day is belief and confi- 
dence in similar methods, without which there is nothing 
for ourselves but a haphazard success ; no connection with 
the eternal and inevitable past, and none with a future, 
which may change our materials, but will never change 
our human need for harmony and order. 

You have heard of the little gardens, and of their ex- 



quisite details, in which the Japanese makes an epitome 
of nature, arranged as if for one of his microscopic jewels 
of metals, ivory, or lacquer. 

Here in our own garden there would seem no call for 
an artificial nature. The mountain slope on which we live 
must have always been beautiful of itself; but for all that, 
our garden — that is to say, the space about our landlord's 
house and our own — has been treated with extreme care. 
Our inclosure is framed towards the great temple groves, 
and the great mountains behind them, by a high wall of 
rock, over which, at a corner edged with moss, rolls a 
torrent, making a waterfall that breaks three times. The 
pool below, edged with iris that grow in the garden sand, 
is crossed by a bridge of three big flat stones, and empties 
secretly away.. On each side of the fall, planted in the 
rock wall, stands a thick-set paulownia, with great steady 
leaves, and bending towards it a willow, whose branches 
drop far below itself and swing perpetually in the draught 
of the waterfall. Bunches of pink azalea grow in the hol- 
lows of the rocks, and their reflections redden the eddies 
of the pool. Steps which seem natural lead up the wall 
of rock ; old pines grow against it, and our feet pass 
through their uppermost branches. On the top is planted 
a monumental stone, and from there a little path runs 
along, leading nowhere nowadays, as far as I can make 
out. I am right in calling this mass of rock, which is a 
spur of the mountain's slope, a w^all ; for I look down from 
its top to the next inclosure far below, now overgrown and 
wild. What is natural and what was made by man has 
become so blended together, or has always been so, that I 
can choose to look at it as my mood may be, and feel the 
repose of nature or enjoy the disposing choice of art. 

Where the little bridge crosses over, and where mossy 
rocks dip down a little to allow a passage, edged by a 
maple and a pine, I look over across the hidden road to a 

123 



deserted yashiki, with one blasted tree, all overgrown with 
green and melting into distances of trees which, tier be- 
hind tier, reach to a little conical hill, that is divided and 
subdivided by sheets of mist at every change of heat and 
damp, so that I feel half as if I knew its forms perfectly — 
half as if I could never get them all by heart. 

In the sand of our little garden are set out clumps of 
flowers, chrysanthemum mostly, and occasionally iris and 
azalea ; and the two houses make its other two sides. The 
priest's house, an old one, with large thatched roof pro- 
jecting in front and supported there by posts covered with 
creepers, is nearer the water. I see the little priest with 
his young neophyte curled on the mats in the big front 
room whose whole face is open ; while in a break, or wing, 
is the opening to the practical housekeeper side of the 
dwelling. 

Our own house, which faces south like the priest's, 
completes the square, as I said. It is edged on the out- 
side by a small plantation of trees with no character, that 
stretch away to the back road and to a wall terracing a 
higher ground behind. There a wide space overgrown 
with bushes and herbage, that cover former care and 
beauty, spreads out indefinitely toward conical hills hot 
in the sun, behind which rises the great volcanic slope of 
Nio-ho. A little temple shrine, red, white, and gold, 
stands in this heat of sunlight and makes cooler yet the 
violets and tender greens of the great slopes. This is to 
the north. When I look toward the west I see broad 
spaces broken up by trees, and the corner of lyeyasu's 
temple wall half hidden by the gigantic cedars, and as I 
write, late in the afternoon, the blue peak of Nan-tai-san 
rounded off like a globe by the yellow mist. 

The garden, embosomed in this vastness of nature, 
feels small, as though it were meant to be so. Every 
part is on a small scale, and needs few hands to keep 

124 



things in order. We have a little fountain in the middle 
of the garden, which gives the water for our bath, and 
sends a noisy stream rolling through the wooden trough 
of the wash-room. The fountain is made by a bucket 
placed upon two big stones, set in a basin, along whose 
edge grow the iris, still in bloom. A hidden pipe fills 
the bucket, and a long, green bamboo makes a conduit 
for the water through the wooden side of our house. 
With another bamboo we tap the water for our bath. In 
the early morning I sit in the bath-room and paint this 
little picture through the open side, while A , up- 
stairs in the veranda, is reading in Dante's " Paradiso," 
and can see, when he looks up, the great temple roof of 
the Buddhist Mangwanji. 

Occasionally the good lady who takes care of our 
priest's house during his weeks of service at the temple 
of lyemitsu salutes me while at my bath, for the heating 
of which her servant has supplied the charcoal. She is 
already dressed for the day, and in her black silk robe 
walks across the garden to dip her toothbrush in the 
running water of the cascade. Then in a desultory way 
she trims the plants and breaks off dead leaves, and later 
the gardener appears and attends to one thing after 
another, even cHmbing up into the old pine tree, taking 
care of it as he does of the sweet-peas ; and I recall the 
Japanese gardener whom I knew at our Exposition of 
1876, as I saw him for the last time, stretched on the 
ground, fanning the opening leaves of some plant that 
gave him anxiety. 

Thus the Japanese garden can be made of very slight 
materials, and is occasionally reduced to scarcely any- 
thing, even to a little sand and a few stones laid out ac- 
cording to a definite ideal of meaning. A reference to 
nature, a recall of the general principles of all landscapes, 
— of a foreground, a distance, and a middle distance; 

125 



that is to say, a little picture, — is enough. When they 
cannot deal with the thing itself — when they do, they 
do it consummately — they have another ideal which is 
not so much the making of a real thing as the making of 
a picture of it. Hence the scale can be diminished, with- 
out detriment in their eyes, until it becomes lilliputian 
to ours. All this I take to be an inheritance from China, 
modified toward simplicity. I do not know to what 
type our little garden belongs. For they have in their 
arrangements manners of expressing ideas of association, 
drawing them from nature itself, or bringing them out by 
references to tradition or history, so that I am told that 
they aim to express deHcate meanings which a Western 
imagination can hardly grasp ; types, for instance, con- 
veying the ideas of peace and chastity, quiet old age, 
connubial happiness, and the sweetness of solitude. Does 
this make you laugh, or does it touch you — or both ? I 
wish I knew more about it, for I am sure that there is 
much to say. 

I have spoken of simplicity. The domestic architec- 
ture is as simple, as transitory, as if it symbolized the life 
of man. You can see it all in the drawings, in the lac- 
quers, and it has recently been treated completely in the 
charming book of Professor Morse. Within, the Japanese 
house is simplicity itself; all is framework, and moving 
screens instead of wall. No accumulations, no bric-a- 
brac ; any lady's drawing-room with us will contain more 
odds and ends than all that I have yet seen together in 
Japan. The reserved place of honor, a sort of niche in 
the wall, the supposed seat of an ideal guest, has upon its 
bench some choice image on a stand, or a vase with ele- 
gant disposal of flowers or plants, and above it the hang- 
ing roll with drawing or inscription. Perhaps some other 
inscription or verse, or a few words on a tablet upon some 
cross-beam, and perhaps a small folding screen. Other- 

126 



wise all works of art are put aside in the fireproof store- 
house, to be brought out on occasions. The woodwork is 
as simple as it can be — occasionally, some beautiful join- 
ery ; always, when it can be afforded, exquisite workman- 
ship ; and, above all, exquisite cleanliness. For there are 
no beds — only wadded coverlets and the little wooden 
pillow, which does not disturb the complicated feminine 
coiffure in the languors of the night. No tables ; food is 
laid on the cleanly mats, in many trays and dishes. No 
chairs ; the same mats that serve for bedstead and table 
serve for seats with, perhaps, a cushion added. 

And this is all the same for all, from emperor's palace 
to little tradesman's cottage. There is nothing, appa- 
rently, but what is necessary, and refinement in disposing 
of that. The result is sometimes cold and bare. There 
is the set look of insisting upon an idea — the idea of doing 
with Httle : a noble one, certainly ; as, for instance, when 
the emperor's palace at Kioto is adorned merely by the 
highest care in workmanship and by the names of the art- 
ists who painted the screen walls — in solitary contradic- 
tion to the splendor and pomp of all absolute rulers, no 
storehouse for the wasted money of the people, but an 
example of the economy which should attend the life of 
the ruler. It is possible that when I return I shall feel 
still more distaste for the barbarous accumulations in our 
houses, and recall the far more civilized emptiness per- 
sisted in by the more esthetic race. 



127 



BRIC-A-BRAC 

NiKKO, August 12. . 

I NEED not tell you that the pervading manner of 
spending time and money is always within our reach. 
We do not go after the owner and seller of bric-a-brac ; 
he comes to us. 

Coming from afar, — fromTokio, a hundred miles away, 
and from Ozaka, four times that distance, — bales of 
merchandise are unloaded at our door, or at our friends' 
for us. Patient pack-horses stand in the inclosure of 
the yards ; big parcels, and piles of boxes and bundles, 
encumber the verandas. Weary hours, beginning with 
excitement and ending with gentle disappointment, are 
spent in indecision of judgment and uncertainty of pur- 
chase. But there remains always at the bottom of the 
boxes a delusive hope, and some treasure may perhaps 
reward our patience. 

And then, besides occasional beauties in color or design, 
there is something in looking over all these debris of civil- 
ization in their own home ; and odds and ends, having 
not much more excuse for themselves than that they 
remain, help to explain either the art or the habits of 
the country, or its history, or the nature we see about us. 
We have found almost nothing among the things brought 
us which can rank as work of high art, and I am afraid 
that we must be looked down upon by our friends for 
purchases which have no excuse in any lofty esthetic code. 
But they have the charm of being there, and of explain- 
ing, and in another way of teaching, even when they are 
bad, and often because they are bad. Because- their very 

128 



poverty helps to a classification and to an analysis of the 
means through which the artist worked, and to a know- 
ledge of the prevalent subjects and arrangements which 
he found ready to his hand, bequeathed to him by an 
earlier and nobler choice. 

From all this poor stuff exhales the faded scent of a 
greater art and refinement, which is now invisible, or de- 
stroyed, or subsisting only in fragments, difftcult of access, 
or which are far away. And there is a peculiar unity in 
the arts of the extreme East. We must remember that 
this very sensitive Japanese race has developed in its art, 
as in everything, without being subjected to the many 
direct and contradictory influences which have made our 
Western art and civiHzation. There have been here, 
within historic times, no vast invasions of alien races, 
bringing other ways for everything in thought and in life, 
and obliging an already complex civilization to be begun 
over and over again on readjusted bases ; no higher living 
and advanced thought obliged to yield for times and half 
times, until the grosser flames of energy could be purified ; 
no dethronement, within society tried by every other cal- 
amity, of the old primeval faith. Instead of a tempest of 
tastes and manners of feeling blowing from every quarter, 
and in which the cruder disHkes have held for centuries 
the balance against cultured Hkings and devotion, Japan 
has been carried on in one current, in which have mingled, 
so as to blend, the steady influences of the two most con- 
servative civilizations of India and of China. 

All here to-day, and for far back, is interwoven with 
Chinese thought, breaks through it, returns to it, runs 
alongside of it. And through Buddhism, its fervor, its 
capacity for taking up in its course boulders of other 
creeds or habits, a something different, higher in aspir- 
ation and in form, has lived with everything else and 
affected all. 

9 129 



This impressionable race found, contrasting with and 
supporting its nature, secure, steady, undeviating guides, 
so that these foreign ideals have persisted here with a 
transplanted life. In fact, it is possible to look to Japan 
to find something of what ancient China was. So much of 
what has here been done, as their language does to-day, 
saves for us a hint or a reflection of the great Chinese 
ages, when China had not yet been conquered by the 
foreigner, and when energies apparently unknown to the 
China of to-day flourished with the strength of youth. 
The art and literature of Japan, therefore, represent in 
great part the Chinese prototype — an original which for 
us has practically disappeared. We cannot easily know 
what arrangements and compositions, what free interpre- 
tations of the world, or severe imitations of nature, the 
old Chinese adopted, but they are reflected or continued 
in the styles and subjects and treatments of what we call 
Japanese. The limits and definitions of each may be clear 
to the Japanese critic, but to our casual Western eye they 
merge or derive one from the other, like some little-known 
streams which make one river. 

Almost all the arrangements that we know so well on 
Japanese drawings, screens, bronzes, lacquers, ivories, etc., 
have Chinese prototypes. And all this is over and above 
the constant use of Chinese legend, and story, and phil- 
osophy, which are to Japan what Greece and Rome used 
to be to us — a storehouse of associated meanings and 
examples. 

Would it amuse you if I made out some of the types 
that you see ? 

Here are the pine-tree and the stork, emblems of long 
life ; or the bamboo and the sparrow, which typify the 
mildness and gentleness of nature. 

The willow waves in the wind to and fro, and the swal- 
lows swing forth and back again. 

130 



The names of Color and of Love are joined by a sim- 
ilarity of sound, and probably by a mystic association : 
and so you will see upon the screens that the leaves of 
the maple turn red in autumn, when the stag calls the 
doe. The cherry-blossom's splendor is for show, like the 
pheasant's plumage. 

Long centuries ago the plum became the poet's tree, 
because of an early poet's verses ; and the nightingale, 
also a singer and a poet, is associated with the tree. 

The tiger hiding in the jungle has a background of 
bamboo, as the oxen have the peach-tree, from an old 
Chinese sentence : '* Turn the horse loose on the flower- 
covered mountain, and the ox into the orchard of peaches." 

The cock stands on the unused war-drum, which is a 
Chinese symbol of good government, the aim of which is 
peace. 

Or, again, legends and stories are referred to. 

The cuckoo flies across the crescent of the moon, and 
the story of Yorimasa is called up, who slew with bow 
and arrow the mysterious monster that had tormented 
the life of the Mikado Narihito. I despair of telling the 
story without great waste of words, and I half- regret 
having chosen the example ; but, perhaps, it is all the 
more Japanese for its complication. 

You must know that the Mikado — this was about the 
year 1153 — had been ill night after night with terrible 
nightmares, to the confusion of his numerous doctors ; 
and that his many feminine attendants had done all they 
could to soothe him, to no avail. Every night, at the hour 
of the Bull (two A. M., an hour when evil power is great), 
the dovecote was fluttered by this fearful visitation. But, 
at length, either these gentle dames or other watchers 
noticed that before each access a cloud had drifted over 
the palace, and that, resting just above the sleeping- 
apartments, two Hghts shone out from the dark mass. 

131 



Then the bells of the city temples sounded the hour of 
the Bull. The gentlemen of the palace and the imperial 
guards were set on watch, the priests prayed to ward off 
the evil influence; but uselessly. Then Yorimasa — a 
brave warrior, a famous archer, one of the guards — was 
allowed, or ordered, to try to destroy the evil thing, what- 
ever it might be. He, with a follower, watched nightly 
until the dark cloud and the shining orbs were near, when 
the great bow of Yorimasa was discharged, and a strange 
and wonderful beast fell blinded to the ground. 

The sword of Yorimasa despatched it in nine separate 
blows, and the thing, — said to have had something of the 
monkey, the tiger, and the serpent, — was burned to ashes. 
For this Yorimasa was given the girl he loved, the Lady 
Iris-flower (who, therefore, had not watched in vain), and 
with her the celebrated sword called Shishino-o (King of 
Wild Boars). Now the imperial deputy, as he presented 
this sword to Yorimasa, tried him with a punning verse, 
while a cuckoo sang. This is what the verse said: 

" The cuckoo above the clouds, how does it mount ? " 
But it meant, '' Like the cuckoo to soar so high, how is it 
so ? " To which Yorimasa answered, filling in the neces- 
sary couplet, "The waning moon sets not at will," which 
might also mean, in modest disclaimer of ambitious effort, 
'' Only my bow I bent; that alone sent the shaft." And 
so this moon stands in the picture, as in the verses, for 
the bent bow of Yorimasa. 

It is a shorter story, that which makes the allusion in 
the type of the chrysanthemum and the fox. It is a var- 
iation of the perpetual story. The prince royal of India 
had a lovely mistress, who had bewitched him, and who 
fell asleep one day in a bed of chrysanthemums, where 
her lover shot at and wounded a fox in the forehead. The 
bleeding temple of the girl discovered the evil animal she 
really was. For the fox, as in China, is in Japan a wicked 

132 



animal, capable of everything in the way of transformation 
and suggestion. 

There are endless stories about him, and the belief or 

superstition is still very strong. O was talking to us 

lately about the scorcerers and spiritual mediums and for- 
tune-tellers, and, as an explanation of the power of some 
medium, told us that he claimed to have ,in his service 
tame foxes. Only, when I asked where they might be 
lodged in the little city house, he explained that they 
were not living in the body, and therefore cumbersome, 
but were the spirits of foxes, thus subservient, and able to 
penetrate everywhere and report. 

The badger also is a misleading creature, and the cat is 
considered uncertain. 

Or take the way in which Hokusai refers to ancient 
story when, at the end of one of his books, he makes a 
picture of the devoted knight Kojima Takanori clad in 
armor, covered with the peasant's rain-cloak ; and he is 
writing on the trunk of the cherry-tree the message of 
warning for his master, the Emperor Go-Daigo Tenno. 
But instead of the old verse, Hokusai has put : '' In the 
sixth year of the era Tempo, in the month of April, my 
seventy-sixth year, this is written by me, formerly by 
name Hokusai, but now more correctly known as ' The 
Old Man gone Mad for Painting.' " 

Here I have been wandering into Japan, while my 
theme was rather the persistence of Chinese subjects, or 
of subjects connected with China, the list of which would 
be endless, from Shoki, the devil-killer, hunting his prey 
of imps over sword-guards and round the corners of 
boxes, to pictures of aphorisms, such as this saying of 
Confucius, of which I found a drawing yesterday : "Avoid 
even the appearance of evil ; do not stop to tie your shoes 
in the melon-patch of an enemy." And so these innu- 
merable subjects are common property, and serve as a 
9* 133 



field for the artist to try to be himself, to bring out the 
story or part of it, or his way of looking at it, or its deco- 
rative capacity, or any way of anchoring the Japanese 
imagination. I cannot say that for many of the ordinary 
arrangements, the most simple and conventional, one does 
not often suffer the boredom of repetition, as we do at 
home, with the eagle and the stars, and armorial bearings, 
and the stereotyped symbolism of churches. But it suf- 
fices to see the thing well done again, to start once more 
into some new enjoyment of the choice of subject. 

So there can exist with regard to these subjects, appar- 
ently mere motives of form, and partly because they are 
conventional, a deeper convention or meaning, more or 
less visible to the artist when at work, according to his 
temperament or his school, as in our poetry, where an 
idea may or may not be overlaid with realistic or esthetic 
decoration. 

I reach out for the first design that my hand can find, 
which turns out to be a drawing by Chin-nan-pin. I have 
chosen at haphazard, but the choice is perhaps all the 
better. We shall have no example of a great man to deal 
with, but merely the work of a remarkable Chinaman who, 
somewhere in the early eighteenth century, happened to 
come to Japan, or to be born there, so as to fit into a cer- 
tain Chinomania then prevalent. The photograph that I 
send you is a poor one. You can merely discern the pat- 
tern, or what might be called the masses, of the design. 
A horse is tied to a tree, — a horse of Japan, — and a 
monkey slides down the trunk and clutches at the halter 
that prevents escape. I need not ask you to admire the 
stealthy and yet confident step of the ape, and the motions 
and repugnance and fright of the horse. I don't think 
that they could be better given. Withal, there is a grav- 
ity of general outline and appearances, and a pleasantly 
managed balance of the full and empty spaces. But these 

134 







PAINTING BY CHIN-NAN-PIN. 



decorative points are not those I wish to refer to just now. 
What I wish to indicate now is that this subject, which 
might have suited a Dutchman for reaHsm and for its 
choice of the accidental, will mean, if you wish to see it, 
the natural resistance and struggle of the inferior nature 
against a superior mastery which it does not understand, 
and which at first appears capricious and unreasonable. 
Without being quite certain of the accuracy of my defini- 
tion, I know that the design is based upon a like con- 
vention. 

This may not be spirituality, but how far it is from 
what we call realism, and how wise the acceptance by the 
artist of a convention which allows him to give all his en- 
ergies to a new interpretation, through his own study of 
nature ! As with those who have chosen distinctly reli- 
gious subjects, and whose vitality and personality can 
triumph and coexist with the absence of novelty in the 
theme, so the artist in more ordinary subjects may be 
wise in keeping to themes which are known to those 
whom he addresses, and in which they can fully grasp 
and enjoy his success. These general themes allow a 
stricter individuality in the artist who uses them, when he 
is capable, and make his want of individuahty tolerable, 
and even laudable and pleasant, when, like most of us, he 
has little of his own. Then he can never be so offensive 
if we do not Hke him. Those that we do not like are 
often offensive because their personal vanity appears upon 
a solid ground of their own stupidity. Perhaps this is 
why the Japanese objet d'art never offends, at least in the 
older work done under the general influences that have 
obtained with the race. 

Hence, also, their astonishing variety. A thousand 
times, many thousand times, you will have seen the same 
subject, but never the same rendering, never the same ob- 
ject, twice repeated. That is to say, that whenever it is 

137 



worth while we can get at the most valuable and costly 
part of the work of art, the humanity that made it, 
the love of something that went with the work. It is this 
that makes the mystery of the charm of innumerable little 
pieces of older work, Hke the metal-work that belongs to 
the old swords, any one of which is superior to anything 
that we do, unless in the rare cases when we bring in the 
expensive life of a great master to rival it — some part of 
the work left by a Barye, a Cellini, a Pisano. 

All that our great men have done is exactly opposite 
to the tendency of our modern work, and is based on the 
same ground that the Japanese has lived and worked on 
— i. e.y the reality and not the appearance, the execution 
and not the proposition of a theme. The whole principle 
is involved in the analysis of, say, a successful study from 
nature — a beautiful painting, for instance, of a beautiful 
sky. In such a case the subject is all provided ; the im- 
portance of the result depends upon the artist's sensitive- 
ness to the facts suppHed to him, upon his use of his her- 
editary and acquired methods of recording them, and 
upon his personal variation of those methods. No one 
dreams of praising the art of the sky itself, that is to say, 
the fact that the facts existed ; to praise the artist for the 
thing having occurred from which he worked. It is this 
apparent want of comprehension of the first principles of 
the plastic arts in our poor work, and in a vast proportion 
of our best, that makes any reasonable man a pessimist as 
to our near future. Every poor element of our civiliza- 
tion is against it, and our influences are now deteriorating 
the art of Japan. We value material or the body instead 
of workmanship or the right use of the body ; and instead 
of style and design, the intellect and the heart. To us a 
gold object seems spiritually precious, and we hesitate at 
working in other than costly materials. To the Japanese 
workman wood and gold have been nothing but the means 

138 



to an end. We had rather not do anything than do any- 
thing not enduring, so that when our materials are diffi- 
cult, the life has flown that was to animate them ; the 
Japanese is willing to build a temporary architecture, and 
make a temporary lacquer, which holds more beauty and 
art than we to-day manage to get in granite or in metal. 

And when the Oriental workman takes the hardest sur- 
faces of steel or of jade, he has had the preparations for 
using it with mastery ; it is again plastic and yielding for 
himj as the less abiding materials have been before. Nor 
would the Japanese artist understand the point of view of 
many of our men, who do their best to put an end to all 
art, so lost are they in our vanity of ''advertisement.'' 
The Japanese would never have invented the idea of 
doing poorly the work one is forced to do to live, so as to 
reserve vast energy for more important or influential work 
that might draw attention to him. The greater part of 
our " decoration " is carried out just the contrary way to 
his. Our artists accept as a momentary curse the fact 
that to live they may have to draw patterns, or work in 
glass, or paint or model subsidiary ornamentation. They 
look forward to the glorious time when they may wreak 
their lofty souls in the dignity of paint mixed with the 
sacred linseed oil, or in the statue done in bronze or 
carved in marble by other hands than theirs. And yet 
if their nature be not too far removed from ours, the 
habit of doing less than their best, the habit of doing 
poorly, the scorn of anything but the fine clothes of a fine 
material, will never be gotten over, and throughout this 
little cheapness of soul, this essential snobbishness, will be 
felt to puzzle and disconcert those who wish to admire. 

That is to say, that they too often do not look to the 
end, but to the means, while to the artist the means are a 
mere path — as with the Greeks, whose work will live, 
even if its very physical existence is obliterated, because 

139 



it is built in the mind, in the eternity of thought. So 
Greek art existed, and has Hved, and lives, the most flour- 
ishing and richest that we know of — with less to repre- 
sent it than we turn out daily. So it lived, when it had 
no longer anything of its own body to represent it, in 
everything that was done in every country which kept 
its lessons ; and lives still, without examples to refer to, 
even into the very painting of to-day. It is the principle 
of the proper place of means that makes the little piece 
of Japanese metal-work — for instance, the sword-guard 
or the knife -handle — an epitome of art, certainly a greater 
work of art than any modern cathedral. And as certainly 
we shall never even produce good ordinary ornamental 
work until we feel the truth that I have lamely indicated. 

^'I might perhaps do as well as this," said an intelligent 
architect, as we looked at some excellent but not noblest 
details of French Renaissance, ''but how could I spend the 
time on it ? And not only that, but how could I have 
spent the time previous to this in doing other similar 
work to train me ? I can only make a project, have it 
carried out by the best commercial firm, not anxious to 
change the course of trade, and shut my eyes to the re- 
sult. I should never be criticized, because I did not give 
more than my bargain." And yet to give more than your 
bargain is merely to give art. 

Look at this little netsuke} or inro'^- or sword-guard, 
and follow the workman as you admire each detail of the 
execution. He has chosen some subject or some design 
which may have an associated meaning, or may be of 
good omen, and bear good wishes, or he may have chosen 
out of the entire world of observation, of fancy, or of tra- 
dition ; and may have chosen just as much because it fits 
well the space which he has to cover. 

1 Carved button used for suspending the tobacco-pouch to the belt. 

2 A nest of small boxes carried suspended from the belt. 

140 



He will take as well a design that has been used a hun- 
dred times as a newer one. For he has to reiitvent it in 
execution, even as the Greek sculptor who recut again 
the '' ^%<g and dart," or the orator who is to expound and 
carry out to success some argument all ready in his mind 
— as the old architect who rebuilt a glorious Greek tem- 
ple upon the rules and canons of proportion that others 
had used before him. But he has to see that this de- 
sign in his mind — or nearer yet, perhaps on paper — 
shall fit the spaces of the material and of the object which 
he is to make, so that it shall be made, as it were, for that 
place only. He will then go again to nature, — perhaps 
working directly from it, perhaps only to his memory 
of sight, — for remember, that in what we call working 
from nature — we painters — we merely use a shorter strain 
of memory than when we carry back to our studios the 
vision that we wish to note. And more than that, the 
very way in which we draw our lines, and mix our pig- 
ments, in the hurry of instant record, in the certainty of 
successful handling, implies that our mind is filled with 
innumerable memories of continuous trials. 

The workman then goes to nature, and finds in it the 
reality and the details of his design, even, let us say, to 
the very markings of a tree trunk that he has chosen : 
they are all there, since they exist in the design, and the 
design is good. But they exist only in so far as they ex- 
ist also in the ivory that he cuts — in the veining of the 
tortoise-shell or malachite that is to render it. Now with 
patient pleasure he can hunt out these associations ; he 
can use gold, or silver, or vulgar lead, or lacquer, or the 
cutting and fifing of steel, or the iridescence of mother- 
of-pearl for his leaves, or his stems, or the water, or the 
birds, — for the clouds or the moonlight, — for the sun- 
shine and the shadow, — for the light and dark, — for the 
" male and female " of his little manufactured world. 

141 



These he will model, chisel, sink, or emboss as the story- 
needs, and do it coarsely, or loosely, or minutely, or deli- 
cately, as the unity of his little world requires. And he 
will work in a hurry, or work slowly, he will varnish it 
and rub it down, and polish it again, and bake it many 
times, and let it weather out of doors, or shut it up care- 
fully from the smallest track of dust, or bathe it in acids 
or salts, and all this for days and months in the year. 
And when he has finished, — because to do more or less 
would not be to finish it, — he has given me, besides the 
excellency of what we call workmanship, which he must 
give me because that is the bargain between us — he 
has given me his desires, his memories, his pleasures, his 
dreams, all the little occurrences of so much life. As 
you see, he is following the law of Tao, so that however 
humble his little world, it has a life of its own which can- 
not be separated from its materials ; no picture of it, no 
reproduction, will give its full charm, any more than a 
photograph gives that of a human being. Take out the 
word Japanese wherever I have put it, take out the actual 
materials that I have mentioned, and the description and 
the reasoning will apply. That is all there is to any work 
of art. It does not exist in a fine abstract of intention — 
nor again in the application of some method of toil — to 
define ''technic," as so many young idiots most excus- 
ably \XY to persuade themselves. It exists in an indi- 
vidual result with origins so powerful and deep that they 
are lost in shade. 

To go on, I wish to put it that the same reasons will 
cause the artist, then, to elaborate profusely, to work in 
long patience, to use precious materials, to work slightly 
or carelessly, to finish his work with minute details, or to 
sketch rapidly with the end of a brush filled with the 
single color of India ink. 

There is no difference in reality ; there is only the 

142 



question of the kind of interest he wishes to evoke, the 
sort of relation he wishes to estabHsh between himself 
and his work, and incidentally to me, the looker-on. 

I am afraid that this hazy weather is affecting the se- 
quence of my dreaming, or what I am pleased to call my 
thought, so that you may not clearly understand me. 

Again I wish you to remark that in all fullness of work 
other things are suggested than those directly represented, 
upon the same principle, for the same reasons, that the 
successful sketch, as I said before, is richer than it looks. 
Hence the suggestion of color when there is really but 
black and white ; hence the suggestion of modeled light 
and shadow when there is really but flat color and out- 
lines. Hence the success of all great periods in what we 
call decorative work, because there was no separation; 
there was merely art to be used to fill certain spaces, and 
to recall the fact that it was so used. 

Many years ago I used to read Mr. Ruskin, when *' my 
sight was bad, and I lived within the points of the com- 
pass," and also the works of other men, who laid down 
the exact geography and the due distances, north and 
south, of a certain department or land of art which they 
called " Decoration." Some of them are not yet dead. 
The light of Tao fell upon the subject from the words of 
a child who had been listening to a talk in which I and 
others wiser than myself were trying to follow out these 
boundaries that outlined '' true " methods of decorative 
art, and kept to the received instructions of abstention 
from this and that, of refraining from such and such a re- 
ality, of stiffening the flow of outline, of flattening the 
fullness of modeling, of turning our backs on light and 
shade, of almost hating the surface of nature ; and we 
wondered that when our European exemplars of to-day 
had fulfilled every condition of conventionality, had care- 
fully avoided the use of the full methods of art, in the 

143 



great specialties of painting and sculpture, their glorious 
work had less stuff to it than a Gothic floral ornament or 
a Japanese painted fan, " Father," said the child, ** are 
you not all making believe ? Is the Japanese richness in 
their very flat work so different from what you can see in 
this sketch by my little brother ? See how his tree looks 
as if it had light and shadow, and yet he has used no 
modeling. He has used only the markings of the tree 
and their variation of color to do for both. He has left 
out nothing, and yet it is flat painting." 

Nor have the Japanese left out things. They have not 
been forced to overstudy any part, so as to lose the look 
of free choice, to make the work assume the appearance 
of task- work — the work of a workman bored, nobly 
bored perhaps, but still bored, a feehng that is reflected 
in the mind of the beholder. The Japanese artist makes 
his little world, — often nothing but an India-ink world, — 
but its occupants live within it. They are always obedi- 
ent to all the laws of nature that they know of. 

However piercing the observation of actual fact, its re- 
cord is always a synthesis. I remember many years ago 
looking over some Japanese drawings of hawking with 
two other youngsters, one of them now a celebrated artist, 
the other a well-known teacher of science. What struck 
us then was the freedom of record, the acute vision of 
facts, the motions and actions of the birds, their flight, 
their attention, and their resting, the alertness and anxiety 
of their hunters, and the suggestions of the entire land- 
scapes (made with a few brush-marks). One saw the 
heat, and the damp, and the dark meandering of water in 
the swamps ; marked the dry paths which led over sound- 
ing wooden bridges, and the tangle of weeds and brush, 
and the stiff swaying of high trees. All was to us real- 
ism, but affected by an unknown charm. 

Now this is what the artist who did this reaUsm has 

144 



said, as well as I can make it out: "The ancient mode 
must be maintained. Though a picture must be made 
like the natural growth of all things, yet it lacks taste and 
feeling if it simulates the real things." 

Evidently the painter had not learned our modern dis- 
tinctions of the realist and the ideahst. 

If you washed to know what I admire most in these 
forms of art, I might say to you, keeping, I hope, within 
the drift of what I have been writing, that it is their 
obedience to early rules which were once based on the 
first primeval needs of the artist. And if you pushed me 
further, and Avished to make me confess what T thought 
that these necessities might be, and to make me give you 
a definition of them, and thereby force me into a de- 
finition of art itself, I should hesitatingly state that I do 
not like to define in matters so far down as causes. But 
if you would not tell, or take advantage of my having 
been drawn into such a position of doctrine, I might 
acknowledge that I have far within me a belief that art 
is the love of certain balanced proportions and relations 
which the mind likes to discover and to bring out in 
what it deals with, be it thought, or the actions of men, or 
the influences of nature, or the material things in which 
necessity makes it to work. I should then expand this 
idea until it stretched from the patterns of earliest pottery 
to the harmony of the lines of Homer. Then I should say 
that in our plastic arts the relations of lines and spaces are, 
in my belief, the first and earliest desires. And again 
I should have to say that, in my unexpressed faith, these 
needs are as needs of the soul, and echoes of the laws of 
the universe, seen and unseen, reflections of the universal 
mathematics, cadences of the ancient music of the spheres. 

For I am forced to beheve that there are laws for our 
eyes as well as for our ears, and that when, if ever, these 
10 145 



shall have been deciphered, as has been the good fortune 
with music, then shall we find that all best artists have 
carefully preserved their instinctive obedience to these, 
and have all cared together for this before all. 

For the arrangements of line and balances of spaces 
which meet these underlying needs are indeed the points 
through which we recognize the answer to our natural 
love and sensitiveness for order, and through this answer 
we feel, clearly or obscurely, the difference between what 
we call great men and what we call the average, whatever 
the personal charm may be. 

This is why we remember so easily the arrangement 
and composition of such a one whom we call a master — 
that is why the " silhouette " of a Millet against the sky, 
why his placing of outlines within the rectangle of his 
picture, makes a different, a final, and decisive result, im- 
pressed strongly upon the memory which classifies it, 
when you compare it with the record of the same story, 
say, by Jules Breton. It is not the difference of the fact 
in nature, it is not that the latter artist is not in love with 
his subject, that he has not a poetic nature, that he is not 
simple, that he has not dignity, that he is not exquisite; 
it is that he has not found in nature of his own instinct 
the eternal mathematics which accompany facts of sight. 
For indeed, to use other words, in what does one differ 
from the other ? The arrangement of the idea or subject 
may be the same, the costume, the landscape, the time 
of day, nay, the very person represented. But the Millet, 
if we take this instance, is framed within a larger line, its 
spaces are of greater or more subtle ponderation, its build- 
ing together more architectural. That is to say, all its 
spaces are more surely related to 07ie another, and not 
only to the story told, nor only to the accidental occurrence 
of the same. The eternal has been brought in to sustain 
the transient. 

146 



For fashions change as to feelings and sentiments and 
ways of looking at the world. The tasks of the days of 
Angelico, or of Rubens, or of Millet are not the same ; 
religions live and disappear ; nations come and go in and 
out of the pages of history : but I can see nothing from 
the earHest art that does not mean living in a like desire 
for law and order in expression. It is, therefore, because 
we consciously or unconsciously recognize this love of 
'the unwritten harmonies of our arts, the power of recall- 
ing them to us, in some painter or in some architect, that 
we say that such a man is great. He is great because he 
is the same as man has been, and will be ; and we recog- 
nize, without knowing them by name, our ancestral prim- 
ordial predilections. 

Yes, the mere direction or distance of a line by the 
variation of some fraction of an inch establishes this 
enormous superiority — a little more curve or less, a mere 
black or white or colored space of a certain proportion, 
a few darks or reds or blues. And now you will ask. 
Do you intend to state that decoration — ? To which I 
should say, I do not mean to leave my main path of 
principles to-day, and when I return we shall ha.ve timiC 
to discuss objections. Besides, "I am not arguing; I am \^vv - 
telling you." ^^ [P' 

This is the unity, this is the reality, which disengages 
itself from the art of Japan, even as we know it in com- 
mon, through what we usually call " bric-a-brac." Our 
introduction to it is rather curious when one comes to 
think of it. Suddenly, owing to enormous social changes 
in Japan, involving vast fluctuations in fortunes, most of 
all that was portable was for sale, and flooded our markets. 
Ignorant dealers held in masses small treasures of tem- 
ples, adornments of the wealthy, all the odds and ends 
of real art, along with the usual furniture, along with all 

147 



the poor stuff that would naturally be made for us bar- 
barians, and had been made for us for centuries through 
the trade of Holland. It was as if Paris or London 
had suddenly been unloaded of everything portable, from 
works of art to household furniture. Naturally the main- 
spring of it all, — the works of great draftsmen, for in- 
stance, — being more debatable, more inexplicable, more 
useless, in a word, or detained by stronger bands, just as 
it would be with us, have somewhat escaped the drain. 
Our perceptions have been confused in all this mixture 
by repetitions, imitations, which in every form of art, as 
we know so well in literature, degrade the perception and 
enjoyment of what is good. I can only wonder that the 
world has not been tired out and disgusted with Japanese 
bric-a-brac. And had we not been in such bad straits of 
taste ourselves, such would have been the case. I have 
always considered that the artist needed to be forgiven, 
for his turn toward bric-a-brac ; not for his liking to have 
odds and ends for help and refreshment, but for having 
too many ; because his life is to make, not to collect. To 
others, that can be forgiven easily ; for the pieces of the 
past are a consolation of the present, and one would like 
to feel that a man's likings are his important self, and are 
betrayed by his choices. " Dis-moi ce que tu aimes — je 
te dirai ce que tu es." 

If one had time and did not do, what pleasure it might 
be to describe forever the innumerable objects and things 
that might be found here, even though words are a poor 
rendering of sight. And what pleasure it might be to 
try to describe the greatest of all bric-a-brac, the greatest 
remains of the higher arts — sculpture and painting. 

I have begun some such letter for you, but I fear that 
it may never be finished. Nor do I see any way of giv- 
ing an account of the history of painting in Japan, which 
would have to stand for a still further explanation. Should 

148 



I study it further, can I do more than to increase my own 
knowledge, — and all knowledge is a burden, — and to give 
you cursory proof, by names and a few examples, that 
the art of painting and the art of sculpture are very old 
here ? I should have to begin to ask myself for you if the 
earliest remains do not already prove still earlier schools 
and accepted or debated tradition, and I should then have 
still one thousand years of design to account for. 

I shall probably leave my letter to you un- 
finished. It has already become unwieldy, and 
I could give you only my own impressions. And 3 

then in the history of art everything is needed. . 

It would not be merely reproduction in words, "^ C 
however beautiful, of the surfaces of works that ^-^ 

have survived time, nor of the men who made v4-) 
them, of their characters, the accidents of their p | 
lives, and their technical beliefs. It would be 1/^^ 
simply a history of humanity at a given place. 
It could not be solved by a mere account of the 
place and the race, according to some of our 
later scientific fads. I was writing to you but ,^ 
yesterday, and trying to make out that the work "% '^ 
of art is often a contradiction of the period, or a 
step in advance ; that the moods of feeling of 
the future are as often reflected by art as the ^ 

habits of the present. But whatever personal 
sense of solitariness or of antagonism has in- 
spired or oppressed the artist, he must have had 
partners since he has had admirers, even when 
he antagonizes his time. However transient cer- 
tain of his forms, however much to us who come 
afterward they indicate the period, he has ex- 
pressed not his time, but the needs of others 
who have been looking in the same ways, and 
yet have had no voice. And even if they have 

149 



SIGN AT L RE 

OF 
HOKUSAI. 



not quite sympathized, the accumulations of like tenden- 
cies have become stronger and clearer in their descendants. 
To reflect fully, then, in words, the face of the work of 
art, one would have to melt into it in some way the gaze 
of those who have looked at it ; to keep upon it still the 
gentle looks of the pitiful and the loving, the rapt con- 
templation of the saints, the tender or mocking smile of 
women, the hard or contemptuous appreciation of rulers, 
the toleration of the wise, all of which have been in 
reality a part of the very work. Their negations or 
sympathies have fallen on the work, and these ineffable 
dehcacies of impression are transmitted in it to successive 
generations, even as the shadowing of innumerable years 
of incense-burning has browned the gold and blackened 
the azure, as concealment in the shade has sometimes 
paled, sometimes preserved, the edges of the outlines and 
the modeling of the colors, or exposure and heat and 
damp have cracked and channeled and dusted all surfaces. 
You see what I should consider a true carrying out of 
such a task, and how unsatisfied I should be with any- 
thing that I could accomplish, unless it were to stand to 
you as something fragmentary and evanescent. One 
thing I should like to do, — should I remain long enough, 
and be able to get it from the few acquaintances who 
may know, — and that is, to save some part of the artists 
themselves out of that obscurity by which the lives of great 
workers are almost always clouded. To me Rembrandt, 
and Balzac, and Delacroix, each contradictory to his sur- 
roundings, have become more intelligible through the 
record of their every-day struggle, the exactness of mea- 
surement which one can place upon the personal circum- 
stances in which they carried'out their work, the Hmitations 
of its exact meaning and importance in their own eyes, as 
we follow them in the daylight of favor, or in the gloomy 
endings that so often close the lives of great artists. 

. 150 



I hear occasionally of the wanderings of Kano Moto- 
nobu, the founder of the great school and family of art- 
ists who have lasted through four centuries to the pre- 
sent day, and have filled Japan and the temples here with 
works better or poorer, until the family name becomes a 
burden. I hear about Okio, the charmer, the painter of 
everything and of animals, who began as a little child, by 
sketching on the earth with bamboo sticks when he fol- 
lowed his parents into the fields to work. One might 
perhaps learn about Hokusai, who is tabooed here, and 
about whom I dare not inquire, but whose charming last 
letter, as given by Mr. Morse, comes back to my memory — 
it is so gay and so sad, so triumphant over circumstances, 
so expressive of the view of the world which explains his 
woodcuts. I quote from memory: ''King Em-ma" (he 
writes to a friend) — ''King Em-ma" (the ruler of the 
under world) " has become very old, and is thinking of 
retiring from business; so that he has ordered a httle 
country house to be built, and he asks of me to come to 
him that I may paint him a ' kakemono ' ; so that in a few 
days I must be ready to travel and to take my sketches 
with me. I shall take up my residence at the corner of 
the Street of the Under World, where it will give me 
much pleasure to receive thee, when thou hast the oppor- 
tunity to come over there." 

Or this mocking challenge to old age, at the end of one 
of the volumes of his pictures of Fuji : 

" Since my sixth year I have felt the impulse to repre- 
sent the form of things ; by the age of fifty I had pub- 
lished numberless drawings ; but I am displeased with 
all I have produced before the age of seventy. It is at 
seventy-three that I have begun to understand the form 
and the true nature of birds, of fishes, of plants, and so 
forth. Consequently, by the time I get to eighty, I shall 
have made much progress ; at ninety, I shall get to the 

151 



essence of things ; at a hundred, I shall have most cer- 
tainly come to a superior, undefinable position ; and at 
the age of a hundred and ten, every point, every line, 
shall be alive. And I leave it to those who shall live 
as I have myself, to see if I have not kept m.y word. 
Written, at the age of seventy-five, by me, formerly 
known as Hokusai, but now known as Gakyo Rojin (The 
Old Man gone Mad for Painting)." 

... I had been intending to add, when I interrupted 

myself some way back, that I 
I- MM|U enjoyed in this art of Japan 

MKM — at least in this drawing 
which they call painting — the 
strange nearness I seem to 
be in to the feeUngs of the 
men w^ho did the work. There 
is between us only a thin veil 
of consummate skill. The 
habit and the methods re- 
sulting from it, of an old obe- 
dience to an unwritten law 
common to all art, have 
asked for the directest ways 
of marking an intention or an 
observation. 

This reference to a pre- 
vious tradition of meaning, of 
ideal arrangement by rule, 
this wish for synopsis, this 
I '"^'^ftlim iiiiJ^^^B feeling for manners of expres- 

|- . v4^HHH^^1I ^^^S one's self in the thing 
^^^^-^---es-^feSHHHHi^BW seen, will naturally make art 

INSCRIPTION ON OLD LACQUER. ^ j. ^^ . \ J ' j. ' 

out of anythmg. And it is 
not wonderful that what we call handwriting may then 
give full play to art, in a written language of which ide- 

152 




ography is the key. Given the Chinese characters, their 
original intentions, the associations, historical and liter- 
ary, connected with them, is it anything strange in reality, 
however strange to our habits, to find writing a form of 
art in Japan ? It may have all I have just referred to, 
and be full of the meaning of ideas, and be literature, and 
then it can be made conformable to the la;ws of beauty 
of form and spacing ; and above all, to give character 
of style, and character of personality, to look more or less 
grave, or elegant, or weighty, according to circumstances, 
be elegiac, or lyric, or epic, and reflect on its face the in- 
tentions of the text. And again it will be the mark or 
sign of the person ; so that my Japanese friends can ob- 
ject to Hokusai's bad writing, as betraying something 
not refined, for a weighty argument against his other 
works done with a similar implement, the brush, which is 
the pen of the far East. 

It will then be in what we call drawing — which is an 
abstraction, the synopsis of the outlines of things meeting 
together, of their relative intensities, of their own colors, 
of their relations to the place they are in, that is to say, 
the picture — that this art of Japan, the daughter of the 
art of China, will attain its highest form ; so that in re- 
ality those of us who think of it as appearing at its best 
only in color, in external charm, have not understood it. 
An etching of Rembrandt could fairly be said to repre- 
sent, not so much in itself, but in its essence, what a great 
Chinaman would have liked to do in India ink — the ma- 
terial of all others which, even to us, is his especially. 
The line, the abstract line of Rembrandt, its elegance, its 
beautiful patterning of the surface, is concealed to us by 
the extraordinary richness of som.e of his modeling and 
the extreme gradations of what we call light and shade. 
But it is there all the same, as a geologic foundation, in the 
same way that inside of the Titian's splendor of surface 

153 



there is a decorative substructure as well balanced and 
fixed as a Venetian brocade^ — just as the works of other 
great colorists, as we call them (to designate more com- 
plex men), imply, in their constitution and the mechan- 
ism of their technic, powers of design and drawing 
sufficient to furnish out armies of such draftsmen as flour- 
ish, for instance, in the Paris of to-day. It is this sur- 
plus of richness that conceals the identity. Our arts have 
undertaken an enormous accession of truths and ambi- 
tions upon which the arts of the extreme East have never 
ventured. They have attained their end, the end of all 
art, at an earlier mental period. They are younger, per- 
haps even more like children, and their work cannot in- 
volve the greater complications of greater age ; but it 
has also all that grasp of the future that belongs to youth, 
and that has to be accompanied by deficiencies of know- 
ledge ; that is to say, of later acquirement and the prac- 
tice of good and evil. And it is impossible to look at 
the expression of nature, or of any intention made by the 
child in full sincerity, without realizing that the aim of 
the artist, be he even Michael Angelo, is to return to a 
similar directness and unity of rendering. Not that the 
Eastern artist, any more than the child, could be con- 
scious of deficiencies of which he had not thought. He 
has been satisfied, as we have been satisfied, but for a 
longer time and under a greater prestige. As the fruit 
painted by the Greek deceived the birds, and the curtain 
painted by the Greek painter deceived his fellow-artist, 
so the horses of Kanaoka have escaped from their "kake- 
monos," and the tigers sculptured in the lattices of temples 
have been known to descend at night and rend one an- 
other in the courtyards. O tells me the Chinese 

story of the painter forced to let go his painting of the 
moon for a nominal sum to repay an oppressive money- 
lender, and how, when the banker happened to unroll it, 

154 



the whole room was illumined, and he grew into a habit 
of spending evenings in the mild effulgence of the painted 
rays. But when, after an absence, he looked at it again, 
the moon was gone, — where old moons go, — and he was 
enraged at the painter, though he might well have noticed 
that for many days the moon had not been so bright, and 

indeed had seemed to be ill drawn. O tells me that 

the artist got it back for little, and waited the necessary 
number of days to have its crescent reappear again ; and 

A says that, though the picture is lost to-day, he 

hopes to find it again in China in following years. 

These stories serve as a way of stating to you that as 
long as new wants were not 
felt, newer accuracies did not 
begin to exist, and these limi- 
tations are naturally seen to 
be more easily put up with in 
a civilization of uninterrupted 
tradition. To acquire some- 
thing when one's hands are 
full, something has to be 
dropped. In the stations of 
our own progress in art, the 
advance has at every stage 
involved some deficiency, or 
failure, or weakening on an- 
other side. This is the only 
explanation I can make for 
painting in the extreme East 
not having taken up portrai- 
ture — that is to say, not hav- 
ing triumphed in it, while sculpture has reached out 
toward it in a splendid way. We have seen the same 
thing in the transition from the Middle Ages, when sculp- 
ture outreaches painting in the direction of reality. But 

155 




INSCRIPTION FROM HO-RIU-JI. 



then sculpture is to a certain extent easier and in a cer- 
tain way inferior, because it gives a sort of duplicate of 
the object, not a relation of it to other things. 

So that the Japanese have not come to the work from 
the " model," which has at so many periods and so long 
been ours. Theirs are types of types ; they are not, as 
with us, persons, and the pursuit of beauty in the indiyid- 
ual has not been followed apparently by the art of the 
far East. The personal love and preference of the artist 
embodied in another person their art does not show ; nor 
have their artists given a nameless immortality to certain 
human beings, so that for ages their types, their images, 
their moods, their characters, their most transitory varia- 
tions of beauty, have been proposed to us as an example. 
Have you ever reflected how the nameless model reigns 
in the memory of man with a personal fame more intimate 
than that of Cheops, or Helen, or Caesar, because the artist 
has been obhged to build upon this person his own dream 
of the world — as with the Roman girl who is the Madonna 
of San Sisto ? 

So, again, the Eastern artists have suggested, 
and implied, and used light and shade, and perspective, 
and anatomy, and the relations of Hght to color, and of 
color to light, only so much as they could take into their 
previous scheme. 

In many cases their success is still an astonishment to 
us. Certainly their records of motion, their construction 
of plants and flowers and birds, we have all appreciated ; 
and their scientific, easy noting of colored hght in land- 
scape made even Rousseau dream of absorbing its teach- 
ing into his pictures, which certainly represent the full 
Western contradictory idea, in the most complicated ac- 
ceptance of every difficulty. 

The artist here, then, has not made separate analytical 
studies of all the points that trouble us, that have cost at 

156 



times some acquirement of the past, in the anxiety for 
working out a new direction ; as to-day, for instance, in 
learned France, where the very art of painting, as a mir- 
ror of the full-colored appearance of things, has for a 
quarter of a century been in peril, under the influence of 
the academy drawing-school, the model in studio light, 
and the vain attempt to rival the photograph. And per- 
haps it is needless to repeat again how we have lost the 
sense of natural decoration and expression of meaning by 
general arrangement of lines and spaces, so that again in 
France we are astonished at M. Puvis de Chavannes, who 
uses powers that have once been common to almost all 
our race. 

Here the artist does not walk attired in all the heavy 
armor which we have gradually accumulated upon us. 
His learning in side issues is not unnecessarily obtruded 
upon me, so as to conceal the sensitiveness of his impres- 
sions or the refinement of his mind. As for us, we have 
marched on in a track parallel to science, striving now for 
centuries to subdue the material world — to get it into the 
microcosm of our paintings. Each successive great gene- 
ration has taken up the task, heavier and heavier as time 
goes on, halting and resting when some new " find " has 
been made, working out a new discovery often with the 
risk of the loss of a greater one. 

But how often the processes have covered up what is 
most important, — to me at least, — the value of the indi- 
vidual, his aspirations, and indeed the notions or beliefs 
that are common between us. 

Sometimes this covering has been sordid and mean, 
pedantic or unesthetic, sometimes most splendid. But 
how difficult it has been always for the many to read, for 
instance, in our great Rubens, the evidences of a lofty 
nature, the devout intentions of a healthy mind ! 

Not that we can turn back to-day and desert. From 

157 



the time when the Greek first asserted in art the value of 
personal manhood to the date of the " impressionist " of 
to-day, the career has been one. And certainly in the art 
of painting a vaster future lies before us, whenever we are 
ready to carry the past But remember that whatever 
has been really great once will always remain great. 

Even if I were competent to make more than ap- 
proaches to reflection, this place of dreams is not well 
chosen for eflbrt. I feel rather as if, tired, I wished to take 
off my modern armor, and lie at rest, and look at these 
pictures of the simplicity of attitude in which we were 
once children. For, indeed, the meaning of our struggle 
is to regain that time, through toil and the fullness of 
learning, and to live again in the oneness of mind and feel- 
ing which is to open to us the doors of the kingdom. 



T^' 



.^ 



■f 







i=;8 



SKETCHING 

NiKKO SAN, August 12. 

THE enchantment of idleness is no longer to be lived 
in, of mere enjoyment of what I see. I have now 
to feel the bitterness of work, of effort of memory and 
analysis, and to become responsible to myself for what 
I see, and for the accuracy with which I see it ; just as 
my quieting inhalation of the Buddhist air is disturbed 
by the intellectual necessity of giving to myself some 
account of formulas, and later, unfortunately, of ren- 
dering to you this same account of my impressions. 
And yet I feel so delightfully lazy, so much as if I 
were in a Newport in which all should be new. All 
this place has become more and more enchanting. I am 
sure that I shall go with the regret of not having painted 
whatever I shall leave untried ; all so preferable, undoubt- 
edly, to what shall have been done. Everything here 
exists for a painter's delight, everything composes or 
makes pleasant arrangements, and the little odds and ends 
are charming, so that I sometimes feel as if I liked the 
small things that I have discovered better than the greater 
which I am forced to recognize. 

And, then, all looks wild and natural, as if undisturbed 
by man ; but no one can tell in a place where nature is so 
admirable, so admired, and so adored. 

I like the old roads between yashiki walls, broken up 
with torrents and bridges ; and the small shrines and sa- 
cred trees, which have no great point but that they are 
pretty, and so far away — in the infancy of the world. 
Stones and rocks that are sacred — why and wherefore 

159 



no one exactly knowing ; only that it is so, and has been 
so for a long, long time. 

Three thousand years ago Europe was so, with pagan- 
ism — the peasant or earth belief — gradually lost to our 
comprehension except through hearsay. So we are ac- 
customed to write of the sacred grove ; and here it is, 
all about me, as if history were rnade living. The lovely 
scenery reminds me continually of what has been asso- 
ciated with it; a civilization which has been born of it, 
has never separated from nature, has its religion, its art, 
and its historic associations entangled with all natural 
manifestations. The great Pan might still be living here, 
in a state of the world which has sanctified trees and 
groves, and associated the spirit-world with every form 
of the earthly dwelling-place. I feel as if I were nearer 
than I can be through books to the old world we try to 
rebuild by collation of facts and documents. 

Could a Greek come back here he would find his 
'' soul-informed rocks," and all that he thought divine or 
superstitious, even to the very " impressions of Aphro- 
dite." The sacredness that lives here in mountains would 
seem all natural to him, as would the stories of mountain 
gods who ages ago met here the advance of the Buddhist 
priests. For Buddhism has joined with the earthly faith 
in attaching religious value to solitary places and moun- 
tain heights, and many are the stories which link these 
two beliefs from the early times. As, for instance, when 
Shodo Shonin in his wanderings came here and " opened 
up " the mountains of Nikko. For this saintly discoverer, 
dwelling in early youth among sacred caves, and a de- 
vout reverer of the native and Buddhist deities, had 
long dreamed of wondrous things on distant mountains, of 
celestial or spiritual beings, visible even to the eye, and 
pursued his search according to holy vows and under ce- 
lestial guidance. 

i6o 



Where the red lacquer bridge now goes over the Da- 
yagawa, Shodo Shonin first crossed upon the fairy snake 
bridge, which, hke a rainbow spanning the hills, was 
thrown over for him by a mysterious colossal god of the 
mountain. Here, a few yards off, he built the shrine in 
honor of his helper, the '* great King of the Deep Sand." 
This was in the year J^J of our era; and in 782, after 
much previous exploration, he reached the summit of 
Nan-tai-san, and met the tutelary gods of Nikko, who 
promised to watch over the welfare of Japan and the prog- 
ress of the new religion. These three gods were long 
worshiped thereafter at the foot of the mountain, on the 
bank of the lake named Chiuzenji, by him, along with 
the Buddhist incarnations whose temple he established 
there. So that these primordial divinities were looked 
upon by certain Buddhist eyes as what they named *^ tem- 
porary manifestations " of the great essences known as 
Amida, Buddha, and Kuwan-on. 

Last evening, near the back of the rock upon which is 
the tomb of lyeyasii, I followed some zigzag stone steps 
that lead up to a little shrine, dark among the trees, in 
which is the figure of an old man with powerful legs — 
the master pilgrim Enno-Sho-kaku. Why his shrine 
was exactly there I have not clearly made out ; but cer- 
tainly, as a mountain spirit, his being here is appropri- 
ate. For, born a miraculous child, he loved from infancy 
the solitariness of woods far up the mountains. The rain 
never wet him ; no living things of the forest were ever 
hurt by him, even through chance ; he hved, as they 
might, on nuts and berries, clothed in the tree's own 
dress, of the tendrils of the wistaria. Thus he passed 
forty years among mountains and waterfalls, under direc- 
tions received in dreams, to bring the wild places beneath 
the dominion of Buddha. Two hill spirits served him 
and provided him with fuel and water. The life oi na- 

163 



ture became his, and he moved through water or through 
air as easily as his mind dwelt in the present and in the 
future. 

Naturally, too, when he touched the world of men he 
was maligned and persecuted ; but even then, when ex- 
iled to an island in the sea, he could fly back at night to 
revisit his mother, or ascend his beloved mountains, while 
submitting obediently in the daylight to the presence of 
his guards. Naturally, too, his evil days came to an end, 
and he was freed, and finally flitted away toward China, 
and has never reappeared. With him in the little shrine 
are his faithful imps, painted red and green, and out of 
the darkness his wooden image, with a long white beard, 
looked absolutely real in the rainy twilight. Enormous 
iron sandals hung on every side, offerings of pilgrims 
anxious to obtain legs as sturdy as those of the pilgrim 
patron. Had I been able to leave my own I should have 
done so, for never have I felt as weakened and unen- 
ergetic as I have become in this idle climate. We could 
just see the white stone steps of the little road as we 
came down the steep hill through the wood to the gate 
of lyemitsd's tomb. 

August i6. 

The languor that oppresses me does not disappear, 
and I live with alternations of exertion that reflect the 
weather. There has been an immense amount of sun- 
shine and the same amount of rain, compressing into 
a single day as much as would suffice at home for 
weeks of summer and winter. Suddenly, from hot blue 
skies, come down the cloud and the wet. The lovely 
little hills or mountains opposite our house round out, 
all modeled and full, in glossy green, to be painted in 
another hour with thin washes of gray, thickened with 
white, as in the single-colored designs of the old Limoges 
enamels. Then their edges grow sharp and thin, and are 

164 




MOUNTAINS IN FOG BEFORE OUR HOUSE. 



stamped against further mists, like pale prints of the 
Japanese designs, making me see those pictures increased 
to life-size. And I realize how accurate these are, even 
to the enlarged appearance of the great trees which 
fringe their tops and edges, as these are seen through 
the broken, wet veil of moisture. And even here, again, 
I am puzzled as to whether art has helped nature. 

August 17. 
Yesterday I suffered seriously from the heat. I had 
gone to the little flat table-land that Hes to the north 
behind our house, through which runs a small road, 
untraveled and grass-grown, connecting somewhere or 
other with the road of the great temples. I had in- 
tended to study there, for several reasons ; one, among 
others, because I saw every day, as I looked through my 
screens, a little typical landscape-picture of Japan. Near 
by, a small temple shrine all vermilion in the sun, with 
heavy, black, oppressive roof; then a stretch of flat table- 
land, overgrown with trees and bushes, from which stood 
up a single high tree, with peaceful horizontal branches ; 
on each side, conical hills, as if the wings of a stage- 
scene ; far beyond, a tumble of mountains behind the 
great depression of the river hidden out of sight ; and 
above, and farther yet, the great green slopes that lead 
to the peak of Nio-ho. It was very hot, and all the 
clouds seemed far away, the sun very high in the early 
noon, and no shade. I passed the new priests' houses of 
the old temple near us, where are billeted, to the incon- 
venience of the owners, many sailor boys sent all the 
way from the navy yard of Okotsuka, so that they escape 
the cholera, as we are doing. They are usually washing 
their clothes in the torrent that runs under the bridge of 
three carved stones, which I have to pass to get into the 
little path, frequented by gadflies, that takes me up to 

167 



my sketching-ground. Were it not for the amiably ob- 
trusive curiosity of these youngsters in their leisure hours, 
I should pass through their courtyard into the shady 
spaces near the little temples and the three-storied pa- 
goda, which the priests' houses adjoin. 

I am always courteously saluted by the priests, and 
one of them, living there in vacation, I know. He is off 
duty at the temples of lyemitsu, and I have seen him at 
the home of our friends. I send you a sketch of his face, 
which appears to me impressed by sincerity and a certain 
anxiety very sympathetic. When I sketch near the pa- 
goda I see him occasionally ringing the hanging-bell or 
cymbal, with the same step and air of half-unconscious 
performance of habitual duty that I remember so well in 
Catholic priests whom I knew as a boy. 

Here the memory of Shodo Shonin comes up again, 
with a confusion of intention in the assembled worship of 
Buddhist and native divinities. For the ''opener of moun- 
tains" built the temple here to the same god, with the 
never-ending name, whom he met on the summit of Nan- 
tai-san. And the adjoining chapel, dedicated to Kuwan- 
on, means that she was in reality the essential being, be- 
hind the temporary manifestation, that assumed the name 
and appearance of this mountain god, — the genius loci. 
And the Latin words bring back the recollection of cu- 
rious stones in the mossy green shade, to which is attached 
the meaning of the oldest past ; for they are '' male " and 
*' female " — emblems and images of earliest worship, em- 
powered to remind, and perhaps obscurely to influence. 

Seated at last under my umbrella, I could feel the hot 
moisture rising from the grass beneath me. The heated 
hills on each side wore a thin interlacing of violet in the 
green of their pines. The mountains across the river were 
frosted in the sunhght, -with the thinnest veil of a glitter 
of wet. 

i68 



Between them great walls of vapor rose from the hidden 
river, twisting into draperies that slowly crawled up the 
slopes of the great mountain. Far off, its top was capped 
with cloud, whose mass descended in a shower over its 
face and between its peaks, and kept all its nearer side in 
a trembling violet shadow. 




PORTRAIT OF A PRIES! 



Above the peak the great mass of fog spread to the 
farthest mountains, letting their highest tops shine through 
with a pale-blue faintness like that of sky. But the great 
back of the long slope was distinct, and of a vivid green 
against the background of violet mountains. So solid 
and close-packed it looked under the high light that one 
might forget that this green was not of turf, firm under 

169 



foot, but was a trackless waste of tall grasses high as a 
man's head. Farther on against the northern sky the 
eastern slope was golden and sharp. In the highest sky 
of fiery blue large cumulus clouds shone above and 
through the fog, whose ragged edge blew like a great flag 
toward the south. The little temple blazed in vermilion, 
one side all lighted up, its black-tiled roof hot in the sun. 
In the shadow of its porch the columns and entablature 
were white and pale gold and green. 

My attempt to render the light and heat lasted for two 
or three hours : my damp umbrella seemed penetrated 
by the light, my skin was scorched and blistered, and a 
faint dizziness kept warning me to get back to a larger 
shade. When I yielded, I was only just able to reach my 
welcome mats, saved from something worse by my very 
scorching. Since yesterday I have been ill ; not sleeping, 
but dreaming uncomfortably ; and visited and comforted, 
however, by our fair hostess and the Doctor. 

Murmurs of Buddhistic conversation remain in my 
mind : vague stories of life in Southern monasteries, of 
refined ascetic life, of sublimated delicate food, of gentle 
miraculous powers, known to the favored few that behold 
them at times ; of ascensions and disappearances like 
those of the pilgrim saint of whom I was telling you yes- 
terday — all of which talk mingles with the vague intent 
of my painting. For I had proposed to make my studies 
serve for the picture of the '' Ascension " ; to use the 
clouds and the wilderness for my background ; and to be, 
at least for moments, in some relation to what I have to 
represent ; that is to say, in an atmosphere not inimical, 
as ours is, to what we call the miraculous. Here, at least, 
I am not forced to consider external nature as separate 
and opposed, and I can fall into moods of thought, — or, if 
you prefer, of feeling, — in which the edges of all things 

170 




OLD PAGODA NEAR THE PRIESTS HOUSES 



blend, and man and the outside world pass into each 

other. 

August 17. 

And so, often, I like to think of these trees and rocks 
and streams, as if from them might be evolved some 
spiritual essence. Has not Cakyamuni said that all (liv- 
ing) beings possess the nature of Buddha, that is to say, 
the absolute nature. The sun, the moon, the earth, and 
the innumerable stars contain within themselves the ab- 
solute nature. So for the little flowers, the grass, the 
clouds that rise from the waters, the very drop of water 
itself; for they are begotten of nature absolute, and all 
form a part of it, however great, however small. Abso- 
lute nature is the essence of all things, and is the same 
as all things. This absolute nature will be as are the 
waters of the sea, if we picture it, and its modes will be 
as the waves, inseparable from the waters. Thus the ab- 
solute and all things will be identical, inseparable views 
of the same existence. This nature will be both essence 
and force, and appearance and manner. And so my 
friends here, of the sect which holds the temple, might 
teach me that the little plants, the great mountains, and 
the rushing waters can become Buddhas. 

In these pantheistic sympathies I dimly recall that an- 
other sect finds three great mysteries in its esoteric view 
of the world. The wind whistling through the trees, the 
river breaking over its rocks, the movements of man and 
his voice,— or, indeed, his silence, — are the expression of 
the great mysteries of body, of word, and of thought. 
These mysteries are understood of the Buddha, but evolu- 
tion, cultivated by the '* true word," or doctrine, will allow 
man, whose mysteries are like the mysteries of the Bud- 
dhas, to become like unto them. 

But since the path is open for all to Buddhahood, — since 
these animals that pass me, this landscape about me, can 

173 



become divine, — why, alas ! are not men more easily car- 
ried to that glorious end ? It is because we are living in 
the present; and as that present must have had a past, 
since nothing is lost and nothing disappears, so it" will 
have a future ; and that future depends on the present 
and on the past. Changes and transformations are only 
a *' play " of cause and effect, since spirit and matter are 
one in absolute nature, which in its essence can neither 
be born nor be dissolved. Actual life is absolutely de- 
termined by the influencing action of merit and demerit 
in past existence, as the future will be determined by 
present causes; so that it is possible for the soul to pass 
through the six conditions of the infernal being, the phan- 
tom, the beast, the demon, the human, and the celestial, 
and, through painful transmigration, to reach the supreme 
salvation of Nirvana. Then will end the universal meta- 
morphoses, the trials, the expiations, the unceasing whirl- 
wind of life. Illusion will cease, and reality last, in the 
complete calm of absolute truth. 



174 



NIRVANA 

HAVE I told you my story of the word Nirvana, as 
used by the reporter at Omaha, who managed to 
interview us ? The association of a reporter with any of 
the four states of Nirvana may seem impossible to you — 
but this is the way it happened. 

Owing to A 's being the brother of the president 

of the road, we were naturally suspected of business de- 
signs when we acknowledged that we were going to Ja- 
pan, and, in my shortsighted wisdom, I thought that I 
should put to rout our interviewer by *' allowing " that 
the purpose of our going was to find Nirvana. I had 
misjudged the mind of the true reporter, and did not ex- 
pect the retort, "Are you not rather late in the season ? " 
Whether he knew or " builded better," he had certainly 
pointed out the probable result. I often recur to this 
episode when, as now, I enjoy, in dreaming action, that 
Nirvana which is called conditioned ; that state of the ter- 
restrial being who understands truth by the extinction of 
passions, but who is yet, indeed, very much tied to the 
body — if I may speak so lightly of what is a contempla- 
tion of, and an absorption in, eternal truth, a rest in 
supreme salvation. 

Of all the images that I see so often, the one that 
touches me most — partly, perhaps, because of the Eternal 
Feminine — is that of the incarnation that is called Kuwan- 
on, when shown absorbed in the meditations of Nirvana. 

175 



You have seen her in pictures, seated near some water- 
fall, and I am continually reminded of her by the beau- 
tiful scenes about us, of which the waterfall is the note 
and the charm. Were it not that I hate sightseeing, I 
should have made pilgrimages, like the good Japanese, to 
all the celebrated ones which are about. Exercise, how- 
ever, during the day is difficult to me, and I don't like 
being carried, and the miserable horses of the peasants 
are awfully slow and very stumbly. We go about in 
single file, perched on the saddles upon their humped 
backs, each horse led by the owner, usually a trousered 
peasant girl. Lately on our visits to waterfalls we have 
passed the wide bed of the second river, which makes an 
island of our mountain — a great mountain-river bed filled 
with stones and boulders, through which the waters, now 
very low, divide into rushing torrents ; while in the win- 
ter this is a tremendous affair, and in flood-times the very 
boulders are carried away. Far down at Imaichi, some 
six* miles ofT, is shown one of the long row of stone Bud- 
dhas, several hundred in number, which line the right 
bank of the main river, the Dayagawa, near the deep 
pool called Kamman-ga-fuchi. 

It was there that I drew the biggest of them all, on one 
of my first days here, a statue of Jizo, with Nan-tai-san 
half veiled in the distance behind him — a great cedar 
shading him, and all but the little path and the bridge of 
a single stone overgrown with weeds and bushes. These 
gods along the river are all ugly and barbarous, — coun- 
try gods, as it were, — alien as possible, while the nature 
about them, though strange, is not so far away from me. 

Their ugliness was accentuated by a sort of efflores- 
cence, or moss growth, curled and ragged by weather, 
made of innumerable slips of paper pasted upon them by 
troops of pilgrims to the holy places, who make a point of 
thus marking off their visits to each successive sacred ob- 

176 




STATUE OF OYA JIZO. 



ject. Fortunately, they are what the Japanese call " wet 
goods," that is to say, unprotected by roof or temple, 
and the rains of heaven cleanse them and leave only the 
black and white of the lichens. They always worried me 
like a bad dream when I passed them in the evening, on 
my way home from work, and I can sympathize with 
the superstition which makes it impossible ta count them. 
But this is on the Dayagawa, the main confluent which 
rushes down from Lake Chiuzenji. Our path led through 
the other river, over causeways and bridges, up to the hills 
on the other side, and to a high moorland from which 
the immense southern plain and distant mountains ap- 
peared swimming in light. Two faint blue triangles in 
the air were the peaks of Tsukuba ; nearer on the west, 
the mountains of Nikko were covered with cloud, through 
which the sunburst poured down upon their bases. 

As we rode we passed beneath plantations covered 
with water, so that their mirror, at the level of the eye, 
reflected the mountains and clouds and upper sky in a 
transparent picture, spotted with innumerable tufts of 
brilliant green. And then we dismounted at a little tea- 
house, and sat under a rustic arbor, while our feminine 
grooms, stripping to the waist, wiped and sponged their 
sweating arm-pits and bosoms, in unconcernedness of 
sex. Yet when they noticed my sketching them, as if I 
did not take their nakedness for granted, sleeves and 
gowns were rapidly pulled over the uncovered flesh. So 
true it is that conduct depends upon the kind of attention 
it calls for. Nor was the universal standard of feminine 
propriety unrespected by them, when, on our return, my 
guide, who had, in every possible way that I could imag- 
ine, expressed her adherence to the ways of nature, met 
with the disaster of having her back hair come down ; for 
then, with a shriek, she dropped the rein, and retired, 
blushing, behind the nearest tree, where, in equal hurry, 

179 



another girl guide proceeded to console her, and to re- 
arrange the proper structure of shining black hair and 
ivory pins. 

Then we descended by a narrow path, over which 
hung tree-camellias, still spotted with their last white 
blossoms, whose edges were rusted by the heat. 

The main fall of Urami-no-Taki drops into a deep 
basin, edged by rocks, from a hollow in the highest hill, 
over which hang great trees. On each side lesser cas- 
cades rush or tumble over the rocky faces, and under the 
main column small streams slide down, or drop in thin 
pillars to join it. There is a path, frequented by pil- 
grims, which passes behind and underneath the fall, so 
that we can stand behind and look through it, whence 
its name. All is wilderness ; but a high relief of the pro- 
tector Fudo, guardian and friend of such places, is carved 
on the rock behind the falls, and shows through the 
rumpled edges of the water. All was shade, except 
where the sun struck in the emerald hollow above the 
fall, or where a beam lighted up here and there a patch 
of the great and small cascades, or the trees and rocks 
about them. And here, again, the intense silence, broken 
by the rush of the waterfall, recalled the pictures of 
K'wan-on, whose meaning and whose images bring back 
to me the Buddhistic idea of compassion. The deity, 
or goddess, seated in abstraction by the falling waters of 
life, represents, I suppose, more especially an ideal of 
contemplation, as the original Indian name indicated, 
I think ; but her name to-day is that of the Compassion- 
ate One. 

Of the divinity's many incarnations one has interested 
me as typical, and will amuse you. It is when — in the 
year 696 B. c, though the precise date is not exactly 
material — this power is born as a girl, daughter to one 
of the many kings of China. Then follows a legend like 

180 



df'ti'LJtmU 




that of Saint Barbara. She Is in no hurry to follow her 
princess's duty of getting married, and pleasing her par- 
ents thereby. She is satisfied with a virgin life, and makes 
delays by persuading her father to build palaces for her 
bridal to come ; and when all this has been done, and 
there is no final escape, she ends by an absolute refusal 
of marriage. At which, evidently from a. long exper- 
ience of the uselessness of argument with her sex, her 
father cuts her head off, and I regret to say that she 
thereupon goes to Hell. I suppose that she goes there, 
because, however laudable and high her ideal of life might 
have been, it should have been confined within the views 
of her country, that is to say, of obedience to parents 
first and foremost. However, she went there, and put up 
with it, and that so admirably that the divinity who rules 
the place was obliged to dismiss her, for her contentment 
with her lot was spreading as an example to the damned, 
and threatened the very existence of Hell. Since then 
her appearances again in this world have been on errands 
of compassion and of help. Nor is this constant willing- 
ness to act on behalf of others, and thereby to leave the 
realm of absolute peace, incompatible with that continual 
contemplation of which her pictures or images offer an 
ideal, enchanting to me. 

For, indeed, the fourth Nirvana is that state of truth in 
which supreme salvation is not distinct from sorrowful 
transmigration, and for these blessed beings this is Nir- 
vana ; that, possessing the fullness of wisdom, they can- 
not desire to delay in transmigration, nor do they reenter 
Nirvana, because they feel the extreme of compassion 
for other beings. 

For, in the Buddhist doctrine, compassion is the first 
of all virtues, and leads and is the essence of the five 
cardinal virtues, which are — note the sequence — pity, 
justice, urbanity, sincerity, and wise behavior. To the 

183 



Buddhist, the pitiless are the ungodly. Hence the teach- 
ing of kindliness to all living beings, which is one of the 
** pure precepts " of the "■ greater vehicle," and through 
which all beings can obtain salvation. 

For the happiness, which is the aim of Buddhism, is 
not limited to the individual, but is to be useful, to be 
of profit, to all mankind — a happiness which can only 
be moral, but which must act on the body as intimately 
as the soul is united with it. 

These are the aspirations of higher Buddhism — its 
supreme end, to achieve the happiness of this life and 
of the future one — of the individual and of humanity, 
but differently, according to times and circumstances and 
human powers. In its full ideal here below civil and re- 
ligious society would be the same ; the continual rest of 
Nirvana becoming finally inseparable from our transmi- 
grations — our passions living together with complete 
wisdom, and our further existence not demanding, then, 
another world. And if civilization shall have finally per- 
fected the world of mind and the world of matter, we 
shall have here below Nirvana, and we shall dwell in it 
as Buddhas. 



184 



SKETCHING.— THE FLUTES OF lYEYASU 

' August 24. 

IN the afternoon I go through the Httle road toward 
the west, whose walls are spotted with mosses and 
creepers, and where the gutters are filled with clear, 
noisy torrents, echoing in answer to the general sound 
of waters. Rarely do I meet any one — perhaps some 
trousered peasant girls, drowsily leading pack-horses; 
or naked peasants, with muscles of yellow bronze, 
carrying brushwood on their backs. The .sun is at its 
hottest. Above the beat of the waters rises the per- 
petual strident, interminable cry of the locusts, like the 
shrill voice of mourners in this abode of tombs — the 
voice of dust and aridity. I turn a corner of high wall 
and tall trees and enter, through a dilapidated gateway 
and up some high steps in the wall, an open space, whose 
unknown borders are concealed behind the enormous 
trunks of cryptomeria. For weeks carpenters have been 
slowly repairing a temple building in this court, the big 
beams and planks of freshly-cut wood perfuming the 
place with the smell of cedar. In the grass and on the 
broken pavement lie moldering fragments of the older 
work, still with a waxy covering of the red lacquer which 
holds together the dark, dusty fibers. 

A Httle bell-tower, lacquered red, stands near the other 
entrance, to which I pass. That one has its wall and high 
fence all lacquered red, and a gateway also red and 
spotted with yellow and gray mosses. Down its big 
steps I go, seeing just before me, through the gigantic 

185 



trees and their gray and red trunks, the face of the tall 
pagoda, which flanks one side of the court before lyeyasu, 
and whose other side turns toward the avenue of lye- 
mitsu. The road upon which I come is the avenue of 
lyeyasu. Three different slopes lead within it to the paved 
court, where stands the high Torii of stone, through 
which one goes by the middle path to the high steps 
and the wall, the boundary of the temple. Two great 
banks, blocked with great dressed stones, separate the three 
paths — the central path being cut into wide steps which 
lead up to the Torii. On each of these masses of earth 
and masonry grow great cryptomeria trees, each of their 
trunks almost filling, from side to side, the entire width 
of the surface. They are planted irregularly. As the 
further ends of the banks are less high from the ground, 
I climb up, and sit to sketch against one of the ragged 
and splintered trunks. For all these late afternoons but 
one all has been the same. Far above me, through the 
needle branches of bright or shadowy green, large white 
clouds roll and spread in a brilliant, blotty, wet, blue sky. 
The court is framed in dark green, all above dazzHng in 
light. The great Torii stands in the half shade — the 
edge of its upper stone shining as if gilded with yellow 
moss, and stains of black and white and rusty red con- 
trasting with the delicate gilded inscriptions incised on 
the lower part of the two supporting columns. 

Beyond, the white wall and steps of the temple inclo- 
sure are crowned with white stone paHngs and a red 
lacquer wall behind them, and the red lacquer and 
bronzed-roofed gateway. Here and there gold ghtters 
on the carvings and on the ends of its many roof-beams. 
Near it the great gray tree-trunks are spaced, and out 
of the green branches shows the corner of the stable of 
the Sacred Horses. Its gray walls are spotted in places 
with gold and color. Beyond it are the red walls of 

i86 



one of the treasure houses, made of beams with slanting 
edges ; and in the gable under its black eaves two sym- 
bolic animals, the elephant and the tapir, are carved and 
painted gray and white on the gilded wall. At this dis- 
tance the bands of many-colored ornament make a glim- 
mering of nameless color. Farther back in the trees spots 
of heavy black and shining gold mark the i:oofs of other 
buildings. The great trees near me almost hide the great 
pagoda, and I can see of it only a little red, and the green 
under its many eaves, which melts like a haze into the 
green of the trees. 

Ail these effects of color and shape seem but as a deco- 
ration of the trees, and as modes of enhancing their height 
and their stillness. The great court becomes nothing but 
a basin with highly-finished edges, sunk into the mass of 
mountain greenery. The Torii, alone, stands lonely and 
mysterious. On the space between its upper stone beams 
is placed a great blue tablet with gold letters that desig- 
nate the sacred posthumous name of lyeyasij. 

It is late in the year, and the place is no longer filled 
with pilgrims. I look down, occasionally, on a few strag- 
glers who come up the steps below me — a few pilgrims 
in white dresses ; peasants, sometimes with their child- 
ren ; Japanese tourists, who, even here, at home, seem out 
of place. This afternoon a couple of women, earnestly 
whispering, sailed across the court and turned the corner 
of the avenue of lyemitsu — with toes turned in, as is the 
proper thing in this land of inversion. Their dresses of 
gray and brown and black had all the accentuated refine- 
ment of simplicity in color which is the character of good 
taste here, and which gives one the gentle thrill of new 
solutions of harmony. Our own absurdities were not un- 
known to them, for their velvet slits of eyes were partly 
hid under eye-glasses, in emulation of Boston or Germany. 
They might have been ladies : I am not sufficiently clear 



yet as to limits : perhaps they were geishas^ who now, I 
understand, learn German and affect the intellectual look 
of nearsightedness. If they were, they were far above the 
two little creatures that posed for me yesterday — with 
all the impatience of girls who, knowing what it was all 
about, still could not put up with the slow ways of Euro- 
pean work, when their own artists would have been as 
agile and rapid and sketchy as themselves. 

^\\^ gei-shas are one of the institutions of Japan, — a re- 
minder of old, complete civilizations like that of Greece. 
They are, voluntarily, exiles from regular society and 
family, if one can speak of consent when they are usually 
brought up to their profession of the " gay science " from 
early girlhood. They cultivate singing and dancing, and 
often poetry, and all the accomplishments and most of 
the exquisite politeness of their country. They are the 
ideals of the elegant side of woman. To them is intrusted 
the entertainment of guests and the solace of idle hours. 
They are the hetairai of the old Greeks — and sometimes 
they are all that that name implies. But no one has the 
right to assume it from their profession, any more than 
that all liberties are bordered by possible license. 

The two who consented to pose for me, at the same 
price and no more than I should have paid them had I 
called them in to entertain me and my guests with singing 
and dancing, were, the one a town, the other a country 
girl ; and little by Httle they showed the difference, at 
first very slight to a foreigner, by all the many little 
things which obtain everywhere. It was a source of quiet 
amusement for me to see them posture, in what they call 
their dances, in the very room of our landlord the priest's 
house, where I have so often watched him sitting while 
his pupil bent over his writing, an antique picture, like 
so many Eastern scenes of the ideal of contemplative mo- 
nastic study. But our little priest is away, on service at 

190 



the temple of lyemitsu, and his house is kept for him in 
his absence by some devout lady parishioner, who lent 
us the apartment more convenient than ours, and who un- 
doubtedly shared in the amusement herself. And I asked 
myself if there had been a secret ceremony of purifica- 
tion afterwards. 

I saw, too, lingering at the corner of lyemitsu, the litter 
of a great lady, said to be the beauty of the court ; but I 
was content to have her remain mysterious to me, and 
tried not to regret my indolence, when my companion 
twitted me with his presentation to her, and to associate 
her only with the clear porcelains that bear her princely 
name. And then, again, the priests of the temple of lye- 
yasu came down to meet some prince, looking like great 
butterflies in green and yellow, and capped with their 
shining black hats. The youngest waved his fan at me 
in recognition, and gaily floated back up the high white 
steps and into the sunny inclosures beyond, more and 
more like some winged essence. 

Then the temple attendants brushed with brooms the 
mosses of the pavement about the Torii, and the gates 
were closed. And I listened, until the blaze of the sun 
passed under the green film of the trees, to the fluting of 
the priests in the sanctuary on the hill. It was like a 
hymn to nature. The noise of the locusts had stopped 
for a time ; and this floating wail, rising and falling in un- 
known and incomprehensible modulations, seemed to be- 
long to the forest as completely as their cry. The shrill 
and liquid song brought back the indefinite melancholy that 
one has felt with the distant sound of children's voices, 
singing of Sundays in drowsy rhythms. But these sounds 
belonged to the place, to its own peculiar genius — of a 
lonely beauty, associated with an indefinite past, little un- 
derstood ; with death, and primeval nature, and final rest. 

191 



The last beams of the sunset made emerald jewels of 
the needles in the twigs above me — made red velvet of 
the powdery edges of broken bark, when the distant flutes 
ceased, and I left my study. 

As I came out from the giant trees a great wave of 
the funereal song of the locusts passed through the air, 
leaving me suddenly in a greater silence as I came home. 
Then I could hear the rise and fall of the sound of our 
little waterfall in the garden as I stretched myself at the 
flattest on the mats, and Kato brought the tea and 
put it beside me. 



192 



SKETCHING— THE PAGODA IN RAIN. 

August 25. 

THIS afternoon I returned to the entrance of lyeyasu, 
and sketched under the great trees of the central 
avenue. The great white clouds were there again in 
the blue above, colored as with gold where they showed 
below through the trees ; then they came nearer, then 
they melted together; then suddenly all was veiled, 
the rain came down in sheets, and I was glad of the 
refuge of the tea booths along the eastern wall. It 
was late, almost evening ; no one there ; a (qw pilgrims 
and attendants and priests scurried away through the 
court, disappearing with bare reddened legs and wet 
clogs around the corners of the avenues. And the rain 
persisted, hanging before me like a veil of water. I had 
in front, as I sat in the booths, already damp and gusty 
with drafts, the face of the tall red pagoda behind its 
stone balustrade and at right angles to the great Torii 
that I had been painting. The great trees were all of one 
green, their near and far columns flattened out with the 
branches into masses of equal values. Through them, 
below, in the few openings to the west, the sky was 
colored with the sunset, as if it were clear far over Nan- 
tai-san. The gold of the roofs' edges arid of the painted 
carvings below was light and pale as the sky far away. 
Higher up the gold was bright and clear under the rain, 
which made it glisten ; it glowed between the brackets of 
the lower cornices and paled like silver higher up. All the 
innumerable painted carvings and projections and orna- 
13 193 



ments looked pale behind the rain, while the great red 
mass grew richer as it rose, and the bronze roofs, freshly 
washed, were blacker, and the green copper glistened, 
like malachite, on the edges of the vermilion rails, or on 
the bells which hung from the roof corners, against the 
sky or against the trees. The green, wet mosses spotted 
with light the stone flags below, or glowed like a fairy 
yellow flame on the adjoining red lacquer of the temple 
fence, so drenched now that I could see reflected in it the 
white divisions and still whiter lichens of the stone balus- 
trade. Below it the great temple wall was blotched with 
dark purple and black lichens, and the columns of the 
Torii were white at the bottom with mosses. Its upper 
cross-arm glistened yellow with their growths as if it had 
caught the sun. But the heavy rain was drenching all ; 
and now from all the roofs of the pagoda poured lines of 
water, the one within the other, the highest describing 
a great curve that encircled all the others, and the whole 
high tower itself, as if with a lengthened aureole of silver 
drops. It was as if water had poured out from the foun- 
tain basins, one above the other, which the Italian Renais- 
sance liked to picture on tall pilasters, even as this one 
was profiled against the sky and distant rain. Below, a 
yellow torrent covered the great court with an eddying 
lake, and its course rushed down the great steps or made 
a crested, bounding line along the gutters by the walls. 
I watched for a time the beautiful curves dropping from 
the roofs of the tower, until all grew dark and my coolie 
arrived to carry paint box and easel, and we managed 
to get home, with sketching umbrellas, wet, however, 
through every layer of clothing. 



194 



FROM NIKKO TO KAMAKURA 

NiKKO, August 27. 

YESTERDAY, I went out in another afternoon of 
blazing sunlight, up to the corner of the temple 
inclosure and along its outside edge, where the rocks of 
the mountain, covered with trees, make a great vague 
wall. Under the damp trees runs a path paved with 
small blocks of stone, slippery with moss, or, when bare, 
smoothed by ages of treading. This road leads to the 
little cascade which suppHes the sacred water-tank of the 
temple of lyeyasu, that square block of water under the 
gilded and painted canopy in the great courtyard. 

The waterfall drops over rocks into a hollow between 
the hills ; high trees stand along its edge near a black 
octagonal shrine, with great roof, green and yellow with 
moss. On this side of the water, a diminutive shrine, 
red-painted, with columns and architrave of many colors 
and a roof of thatch all green, out of which are growing 
the small stems of young trees. In front, a Torii, just 
tall enough to pass under, of gray stone, all capped and 
edged with green, velvety moss. A curved stone, cush- 
ioned with moss, in front of it, spans the water-course 
that gives escape to the waters of the pool. The doors 
of the shrine are closed, as if to make more solitary yet 
the quiet of the little hollow. 

Higher up, past the black building and above high 
steps, on a platform edged by walls, stand black build- 
ings, shrines of Buddhist divinities, whose golden bodies 
I can see through the grating of the unfastened doors. 

195 



I feel their amiable presence, while I sit painting in the 
damp sunlight, and the murmur of the waters seems their 
whispered encouragement. 

On my return I looked again toward the abrupt rocky 
hill to find a Httle monument we had passed at its foot, 
just off the road. Through the inevitable Torii a little 
path of rough flagging, all broken up and imbedded in 
moss, leads across the small bridge of two large stones, 
one of whose parapets is gone, and up high steps, half 
natural, to a little altar of big stones with a heavy balus- 
trade around three sides. A little stone shrine with a 
roof stands upon it, and behind it a tall gray rock upon 
which is incised and gilded a device of five disks forming 
a circle. All around about the path and shrine are trees 
covered with moss ; the rocks, the shrine, the path, are 
spotted with green and yellow velvet; all looks as if 
abandoned to nature, — all but the gilded armorial bear- 
ings in the mossy stone, which I take to be those of the 
divinized mortal in whose honor this little record has 
been built, Ten-jin Sama, known and worshiped by every 
schoolboy in Japan. He is the patron of learning and 
of penmanship, and was during his life a great scholar 
and minister of state under the name of Michizane. This 
was just before the year nine hundred. A faithful minis- 
ter, a learned and just man, he naturally gave great um- 
brage, especially to a younger associate whose sister was 
Empress, and who succeeded through malicious slander 
in bringing about Michizane's banishment. 

In his place of exile, separated from wife and children, 
he died two years later. There, I suppose, he rode about 
on the saddled bull, upon which Yosai has placed him in 
his drawings, as also he was seen by Motonobu in a 
dream, of which I have a drawing. There the great artist 
has represented him, faithful, I suppose, to what he really 
saw, as a younger man than he really could have been, 

196 



galloping swiftly and bending down to avoid the branches 
of the trees above. 

Bulls of bronze and marble adorn his temple in Kioto, 
recalling how the bull that drew him to the cemetery 
refused to go further than a certain spot, where he was 
buried in a grave dug hastily. Misfortune and remorse 
followed his enemies, with the death of the Imperial heir; 
so that the Emperor, revoking his banishment, reinstalled 
the dead man in the honors of his office, and bestowed a 
high rank upon his ghost. Since then his worship has 
grown, as I said above. 

As you see, the Mikado has been the fountain of honor 
for this world and the next; and I cannot help being re- 
minded of the constant relations of Chinese and Japanese 
thought in this unity — this constant joining of that which 
we separate. The forms of China may be more "bureau- 
cratic " ; no such national prejudices and feehngs can be- 
long to the idea of the sovereign there as must exist in 
Japan, with a dynasty of rulers as Japanese as Japan 
itself But there has been here, as there, a sort of natural 
duty in the Government to look after all the relations of 
those intrusted to its care. In China, all religion or reli- 
gions must depend upon the sanction of the ruling powers; 
nothing is too great or too small to be satisfied with ; 
official approval may attend the worship of some local 
heroine, official disapproval may be shown to some exag- 
gerations of Taoist superstitions. The source of this right 
and this duty is always the idea that in the ruler all is 
centered ; he is responsible to Heaven, and is the tie be- 
tween the powers above and the deities below. Hence 
there is nothing absurd in his following the governed 
after death. 

In Japan, the forms of this power may be different, but 
its workings will be similar, and hero-worship, combined 
with the respect and worship of ancestors, has had a most 
13* 197 



important part in the development of life here, in en- 
couraging patriotism and lofty ideas, and in stimulating 
the chivalrous feeling, the ideas of honor, that seem to me 
the pecuHar note of the Japanese. However misapplied, 
however mistaken, however barbarous some forms of these 
ideas may appear to us, I cannot make for myself a defin- 
ition of the national character, nor see a clue to many of 
their actions unless I bear in mind the ruling power of 
this feeling. While we are in this place, where lyeyasii's 
name is so important, let me cite a trifling anecdote. 

It is said that on some occasion he accompanied Hide- 
yoshi, the great Taiko Sama, each with few attendants, 
upon some visit, and all were afoot. Now, among the 
retinue of lyeyasu was one Honda, a man of preternatural 
strength, who hinted to his master that this might be 
an opportunity for an attack upon his great rival. But 
Taiko guessed the danger, and, turning round, said to 
lyeyasu : " My sword is heavy, for me unaccustomed to 
walking, so may I not ask your servant to carry it for 
me ? " For Taiko knew that it would have been con- 
sidered a disgrace to attack a man unarmed when he 
had intrusted his sword, not to his own servant, but to 
the servant of his enemy. And lyeyasu understood this 
appeal to the idea of honor. 

August 28. 

Two more days and we shall be gone. As I sketch in 
the temples or about them, everything seems more beau- 
tiful as it grows to be more a part of my daily existence. 
Though I am perpetually harassed through feeling that I 
cannot copy everything, and through trying to force my 
memory to grasp so as to retain the multitudinous details 
of the architectural decoration, I have drawn the curve of 
this, and the patterns of that, and noted the colors, but I 
wonder, if the thread gets loosened that holds them to- 
gether, whether I shall ever be able to separate one from 

198 



another in their entanglement. And then I still do not 
wish to work. There are so many places that I should 
like to look at again without the oppression of an ob- 
Hgatory record. 

This evening I must take another look at the neglected 
graves of the followers of lyemitsil who committed sui- 
cide, as my Japanese account has it, *' that they might 
accompany him in his dark pilgrimage to the future 
world." At least it says this of Hotta Masemori and of 
three others ; while the graves, as I remember them, are 
twenty-one in number, and about this I have never thought 
to ask, but I must do so. And then there may have 
been retainers of retainers. It is a pleasure to me any- 
how to set down at least one name and to help to keep 
this memory clear when I think of the neglected spot in 
which they lie. It is not far from that part of the land 
where stood the residence of their master's family, now 
destroyed, through the days of turbulence which closed 
the last moments of their reign. Broken fragments of 
fencing still lean against the little inclosures of stone 
posts, balustrade, and gate that surround each memorial 
pillar. They stand in two rows in a little clearing, the 
valley sunk behind them, hidden in part by much wild 
growth. 

O was telhng us some little while ago of the feudal 

habit which gave to a chieftain the vow of certain re- 
tainers who undertook to follow him faithfully even be- 
yond the grave. It was expected of them in war that 
they should be about him sharing in his struggle, and if 
he died in peace, near or far, they should be ready to go 
too. 

And as death is the most important thing in life, I can- 
not help thinking over the condition of mind of any one 
who looked forward to such a limitation of its lease. 

When age had changed the view of life, had created 

199 



more ties, more duties, had made the term nearer and 
more capricious, while everything else became more fixed, 
did this bond, with its promise of payment to be met at 
any moment's demand, become a heavy burden of debt ? I 
can occasionally conjure up a picture — perhaps erroneous, 
because my imagination of the circumstances may displace 
them, — of some older man settled in pleasant places, 
rested in secure possessions, with dependants, with friends, 
with affections around his life, learning at any moment of 
the probability that the call might come. He might be 
summoned from any festivity or joy as if by a knocking 
at the door. How curiously he must have watched the 
runners of the mail who might be bringing into his town 
the news from the court, or wheresoever this other life — 
which to all purposes was his own — was perhaps ebbing 
away. How then he would have known what to do, even 
to its most minute detail, and be but part of a ceremonial 
that he himself would direct Vague memories come up 
to me of places set apart in the garden, and the screens 
and the hangings and the lights that belonged to the vol- 
untary ordeal. But as I keep on thinking, I feel more 
certain that my fancy displaces the circumstances of 
former times and of a different civilization. For instance, 
the concentration of the feudal territory, habits of clan- 
ship, the constant attendance, must have narrowed the 
circle and made the individual more like a part of one 
great machinery, one great family, than he can ever be 
again. The weakness, the insufficiency of the individual, 
has been stiffened by the importance of the family, of the 
clan, as a basis of society ; and I could almost say that I 
discern in this one main-spring of the peculiar courtesy 
of this nation, which seems to go along with a great feel- 
ing of a certain freedom, so that the obedience of the in- 
ferior does not seem servile. The servant who has done 
his duty of respectful service seems afterward ready to 



take any natural relation that may turn up. The' youth 
trained in respect to his betters and elders, and silent in 
their presence, will give his opinion frankly when asked, 
with a want of diffidence quite unexpected. The coming 
years are certain to bring changes that cannot be arrested. 

While I was being baked to-day, at my work that I 
could not leave, my companions have been away on a 
visit higher up the mountains, to the hot baths on the 
lake, and, at least for part of the time, have had the weather 
almost cold. They have much to say about the baths, 
and the fullness of visitors, and the difficulty of getting 
place, and one of them has gone to her bath in the native 
dress, and another cannot yet quite get over the impres- 
sion made upon him by the pretty young lady near whom 
he stood under the eaves of the bath-house, where he 
had taken refuge from the rain, and whose modest man- 
ners were as charming as her youthfulness, and had no 
more covering. 

Here everything is still hot and damp, though our 
nights are cooler and I am able to make out more con- 
veniently my notes and my sketches and my memoranda 
of purchased acquisitions. On the lower floor boxes are 
being filled, and to-morrow evening horses and men will 
stand in our garden to be laden ; we shall follow the light 
of their lanterns down the road, and they will seem to be 
carrying parts of us away from Nikko. 



NIKKO TO YOKOHAMA 

Near Utsunomiya, August 30. 

WE left Nikko this morning; a hot, moist, quiet, 
lovely morning. We dawdled at our friends' 
house and breakfasted, and said good-by to our worthy 
landlord. Yesterday he had found fault with my sketch- 
ing him in his ordinary yellow priest's dress, while he 
had vestments as beautiful as any painter or clergyman 
could desire; in proof of which he had rushed into his 
house and reappeared in those lovely things and moved 
about the green of the garden looking as radiant as any 
flamingo. But I knew not of these possessions of his, and 
regretted quite as deeply as he could himself not having 
painted him in them. 

It was a sad moment — that of leaving his little gar- 
den for good, and walking down the road to the enor- 
mous steps under the trees by the river, where we re- 
versed the picture of our arrival six weeks ago. There 
stood the naked runners, and our hostess above us, as 
we sat in the kuruinas, but this time the doctor was 
not with us, except to bid us good-by. His place was 
filled by the professional guide and factotum, who sat 
anxious for departure in his own kurtima, and who for 
days had been packing and labeling and helping to 
make lists, and receiving instructions, and busthng 
about at times when he was not sleeping — and gener- 
ally making life a misery. We rattled over the bridge, 
passed the children going to school, and the polite 
policeman with spectacles and sword, who looks Hke a 



German Rath of some kind or other, and the woman of 
the Eta class ^ who has sold us skins of monkeys and of 
badgers, as well as two baby monkeys, whom we have 
disrespectfully named Sesson and Sosen, after the painters 
who so beautifully portrayed their ancestors. 

Soon we had entered the long avenue of cryptomeria 
and kept on through shadow and sunlight, with our 
runners at their fullest gait, for we had to be in time 
for the afternoon train at Utsunomiya, and it is twenty- 
two miles from Nikko. But we were more than in time, 
and had to wait at an inn near the station. I am ab- 
surdly stupid and fatigued, so that I have given up 
watching the landscape and merel)^ m-ake these notes. 
Besides, there is a missionary near us so self-contented 
that I feel like withdrawing into my own self and dream- 
ing of the times he was not here. I recall a Httle story 
of Utsunomiya, connected with my associations of 
Nikko, which I shall try to tell you; though, at the 
very start, I find a difficulty in my having heard it told 
in several different and contradictory ways — and I can 
only travel one at a time. As I shall tell it, it repre- 
sents a legend believed at least in the theater, which, as 
we know, everywhere makes a kind of history. 

The story is about the shogun lyemitsu, whose 
temple, you know, is at Nikko, and who was near miss- 
ing the honor of being divinized there later, owing to 
a plot arranged by his enemies, the scene of which was 
this little town of Utsunomiya. At that time he was 
but a boy, the heir- apparent, and was on his way to 
Nikko, as was his official duty, to worship at the tomb 

1 " Pariahs. Their occupations were to slaughter animals, tan leather, 
attend at executions, etc. The class, as such, is now abolished, but rem- 
nants of its peculiar dress may still occasionally be seen in the persons of 
young girls with broad hats who go about the streets playing and singing." 
(Satow). 

203 



of his grandfather lyeyasu, lately deceased. In this 
story lyemitsil is not in the legitimate line of descent, 
but is made the heir by the decision of the great lyeyasu. 

His father, Hidetada, was shogun, as you know, hav- 
ing succeeded lyeyasti, during the latter's lifetime, — 
the old man remaining in reality the master, though 
absolved from external responsibihties. Now, Hide- 
tada's wife was of the family of Nobunaga, on her 
mother's side — and bore him a son, who was named 
during his childhood Kuni Matsu. Another son, whose 
boy name was Take Chiyo, was the son of Kasuga No 
Tsubone, a remarkable woman. Each son had tutors, 
people of importance, and around each boy gathered a 
number of ambitious interests, all the fiercer that they 
were dissembled and depended for success upon the 
choice of either heir as shogun, to succeed father and 
grandfather. The claim of the other son was favored by 
the father and more generally accepted; but the son of 
Kasuga was superior in looks, manners, and intelligence, 
and his mother hoped to influence in his favor old lye- 
yasu, the grandfather. 

lyeyasu was then Hving in retirement at Sunpu, that 
is now called Shidzuoka, which is on the road called the 
Tokaido. 

Kasuga took advantage of a pilgrimage to the shrines 
of Ise to stop on her road, and naturally offer homage 
to the head of the family, the grandfather of her son. 
Besides the power of her own personality, she was able 
to place before lyeyasu very strong arguments for choos- 
ing as the heir of the Hne a youth as promising as her 
Take Chiyo. 

lyeyasU advised her to continue her pilgrimage, and 
not to go out of her woman's business, which could not 
be that of interfering with questions of state ; and she 
obeyed. But lyeyasiT revolved the entire question in his 

204 



mind, and decided that there was danger in a delay that 
allowed both parties to grow stronger in antagonism. 
So that he came at once to Yedo, which is now Tokio, 
and visited Hidetada, asking to see both the boys to- 
gether. They came in along with their father and his 
wife, and took their accustomed places. Now these 
were on the higher floor, raised by a few inches from the 
floor on which kneels the visitor of lower degree, in the 
presence of his superior : a line of black lacquer edges 
the division. Thereupon lyeyasu taking the boy Take 
Chiyo by the hand, made him sit by him, and alongside 
of his father, and ordered the other son, Kuni Matsu, to 
sit below the line, and said: ''The State will come to 
harm if the boys are allowed to grow up in the idea of 
equal rank. Therefore, Take Chiyo shall be shogun, 
and Kuni Matsu a daimio." This decision gave to the 
line of the Tokugawa a brilHant and powerful continu- 
ity, for Take Chiyo, under his manhood name of lye- 
mitsii, was as an Augustus to the Caesar lyeyasu. And, 
indeed, lyeyasii had certainly made sufficient inquiries 
to warrant his decision. If he consulted the abbot Ten- 
kai, of Nikko, who was a preceptor of the boy, he must 
have heard favorably of him. For, according to the 
judgment of Tenkai, as I find it quoted elsewhere, **Iye- 
mitsu was very shrewd and of great foresight," and in 
his presence the great abbot felt, he said, '* as if thorns 
were pricking his back." 

Not but that he was also fond of luxury and splendor; 
and one glimpse of him as a youth shows a quarrel 
with a tutor who found him dressing himself, or being 
dressed, for ''No" performances, or "private theatricals," 
and who proceeded thereupon to throw away the double 
mirrors, — in which the youth followed his hair-dresser's 
arrangements, — with the usual, classical rebuke, condemn- 
ing such arrangements as unworthy of a ruler of Japan. 

205 



There are many stories of lyemitsu more or less to 
his advantage — and a Httle anecdote shows a young 
man of quick temper, as well as one who insisted upon 
proper attendance. 

lyemitsil had been hawking in a strong wind, and 
with no success. Tired and hungry, he went with some 
lord-in-waiting to a neighboring temple, where lunch 
was prepared for them by his cook, — a man of rank, 
lyemitsu, while taking his soup in a hurry, crushed a 
little stone between his teeth ; whereupon he immedi- 
ately insisted upon the cook's committing suicide. The 
cook being a gentleman, a man of affairs, not a mere 
artist like poor Vatel, hesitated, and then said: "No 
soup made by me ever had stones or pebbles in it; other- 
wise I should gladly kill myself: you gentlemen have be- 
gun dinner at once without washing hands or changing 
dress, and some pebble has dropped into the soup from 
your hair or clothes. If, after having washed your hands 
and changed your dress, you find any stones in the 
soup, I shall kill myself" Whereupon lyemitsu did as 
was suggested by the cook, repented of his own severity, 
and increased the cook's pay. But the tutor and guard- 
ians of lyemitsu watched over him carefully, and the 
story I had begun to tell shows that they had no 
sinecure. 

The tutors and guardians of the brother, whom lyeyasu 
had decided to put aside in favor of lyemitsu, were nat- 
urally deeply aggrieved and sought for chances to regain 
their ward's future power and their own. 

As my story began, lyemitsu, representing the hered- 
itary shogunate, was called upon to travel to Nikko and 
worship officially at his grandfather's tomb. On his way 
it was natural that he should rest as we did, at Utsu- 
nomiya, and in the castle of his vassal, Honda, who 
was one of the tutors of his brother. This was the son 

206 



of the great Honda Masanobu, of whom I spoke above 
as a champion of lyeyasu. 

Here was an opportunity; and a scheme of getting rid 
of the young shogun was devised by his enemies that 
seemed to them sufficiently obscure to shield them in 
case of success or failure, at least for a time. This was, 
to have a movable ceiling made to the bath-room 
weighted in such a way as to fall upon any one in the 
bath and crush him. Whether it was to be lifted again, 
and leave him drowned in his bath, or to remain as an 
accident from faulty construction, I do not know. 

To build this machine, ten carpenters were set to 
work within the castle and kept jealously secluded, — 
even when the work was done, for the young shogun 
delayed his coming. The confinement fretted the men, 
among whom was a young lover, anxious to get back to 
his sweetheart, and not to be satisfied with the good 
food and drink provided to appease him. He told of his 
longings to the gatekeeper, whose duty it was to keep 
him imprisoned, bribed him with his own handsome pay 
and promise of a punctual return, and at last managed 
to get out and be happy for a few moments. The girl 
of his love was inquisitive, but reassured by explanation 
that the work was done, and that he should soon be out 
again ; yet not before the shogun should have come and 
gone on his way to Nikko. And so he returned to the 
gatekeeper at the time appointed. Meanwhile, during 
that very night, the officers of the castle had gone their 
rounds and found one man absent. In the morning the 
roll-call was full. This was reported to the lord of the 
castle, who decided that if he could not know who it 
was that had been absent it was wise to silence them 
all. Therefore, each was called to be paid and dis- 
missed, and, as he stepped out, was beheaded. The 
gatekeeper, getting wind of what was happening and 

207 



fearing punishment, ran away, and being asked by the 
girl about her lover, told her what he knew and that he 
believed all the carpenters to have been killed. 

Since her lover was dead, she determined to die also, 
having been the cause of his death and of the death of 
his companions. She wrote out all this, together with 
what her lover had told her of his belief and suspicions, 
and left the letter for her father and mother, who re- 
ceived it along with the tidings of her suicide. The 
father, in an agony of distress and fear, for there was 
danger to the whole family from every side, made up 
his mind to stop the shogun at all hazards, and in the 
depth of the night made his way to Ishibashi, where one 
of the princes had preceded lyemitsu, who was to pass 
the night still further back on the road. 

Here there was difficulty about getting a private in- 
terview with so great a man as this prince, whose name 
you will remember as being the title of the former owner 
of our friend's house in Nikko: li, Kammon no Kami. 

The letter was shown to li, who despatched two messen- 
gers, gentlemen of his own, one back to Yedo, to see to 
the safety of the castle there ; the other one to lyemitsu, 
but by a circuitous route, so that he might appear to 
have come the other way. The letter was to the effect 
that the young shogun's father was very ill and desired 
his son's immediate return. By the time that lyemitsu 
could get into his litter, li had arrived and shown him 
the girl's letter. Then the occupants of the litters were 
changed, Matsudaira taking lyemitsH's norimono and 
lyemitsu Matsudaira's. This, of course, was to give 
another chance of escape in case of sudden attack by a 
larger force, for they were now in enemy's country and 
did not know what traps might be laid for them. The 
bearers of the palanquin pressed through the night, so 
that, leaving at midnight, they arrived at Yedo the fol- 

208 



lowing evening; but the strain had been so great that 
they could go no further. There was still the fear of 
attack, and among the retinue one very strong man, 
Matsudaira Ishikawa, carried the litter of the prince 
himself But the gates were closed, and the guards re- 
fused to recognize the unknown Htter as that of the 
shogun; nor would they, fearing treachery,, open when 
told that lyemitsu had returned. Delays ensued, but 
at last admission was obtained for lyemitsu through a 
wicket gate- — and he was safe. Later, after cautious 
delays, the guilty were punished, and I hope the family 
of the carpenter's love escaped. When I first read the 
story, years ago, the version was different, and there 
was some arrangement of it, more romantic — with some 
circumstances through which the young carpenter and 
his sweetheart escaped, and alone the father, innocent 
of harm, committed suicide. The story sounded suffi- 
ciently Japanese and upside down and was pretty, but 
I have forgotten its convolutions, so that I give you this 
one, which I think has a pleasant local color. It has 
local color, and that charm of action which belongs to 
such histories as those of the great Dumas — not to 
mention Mr. Froude. 

Do not forget that these details are given for your 
amusement, and not for your instruction. I am quite 
uncertain as to the historical value of my information as 
soon as I come down to close particulars. What little 
I really know comes down from early reading of the 
missionaries and of the Dutch, and that is mostly out- 
side impression, though thereby valuable, because not 
based on theory or principle. 

I do not know that critical history has yet begun 

here. But in the historical place where we have spent 

our summer, talk about the past was but natural and all 

to be listened to without much chance for us to distin- 

14 209 



guish what was of record and what was of legend. 
What I have been writing about is legend, and I am 
warned of its complicated incorrectness. That has not 
prevented my setting it down. You would like the 
pretty murderous story whose details reflect a peculiar 
past. It would be nothing to you if it were not at all 
lyemitsu, but his father Hidetada, for whose destruction 
the famous plot of the Hanging Ceiling was hatched. 
Nor would you care if the ceiHng and bath-room had 
never existed. What is worth having is that many 
people thought that they saw themselves in the mirror 
of a period. 

Now see how re-arranging the atoms of which the 
previous story is constituted will give you quite another 
picture that I would spare you, though it is a correct 
historical one, but it has the advantage of being quite 
as strange in certain ways, though not so fitted for the 
theater, and of giving you again a picture of feudal Japan. 

As I said before, the story as I have just told it 
has been kept in memory, if not invented on purpose, 
through a book written in honor of a Japanese opposed 
to Honda, the master of the castle, the author of the 
plot of the Hanging Ceiling. There may have been 
such a story afloat at that time among people of low 
degree kept out from the many secrets of the court, but 
knowing that things were being done ; at the same time, 
there is nothing that would account for a sufficient rea- 
son ; and, worse than all, the date is impossible. Young 
lyemitsii was not in any position at that possible date 
(eighth year of the Genwa) to represent the shogunate. 
His father Hidetada would have been the proposed 
victim, which is again impossible because of the devo- 
tion of Honda, the lord of the castle, to Hidetada. That 
there was such an accusation I believe is understood. 
It was met at the time and at once disproved to the 



satisfaction of the shogun. It was the Lady Kano who 
had denounced Honda, and apparently invented the 
plot. She was a daughter of lyeyasu, and had, perhaps, 
some of the fierce strain said to have shown in her 
mother and sister. Her baby grandson had only just 
been deprived of this very fief for the advantage of 
Honda, so, that she had at least this grievance. And 
she was united in intention with the wife of the shogun 
Hidetada. This was a beautiful and wilful woman, — 
known to us by her after-death name of Sogenin, whose 
preference for lyemitsil's brother, her son also, had met 
Honda's resistance. You can realize that I am not capa- 
ble of even discussing the question, and that I am only 
doing it to amuse you and to bring in more pictures. 

As the shogun was to be received by the lord of 
Utsunomiya, new additions were ordered for his castle, 
the bridges and roads were repaired, which works re- 
quired all the laborers, skilled or otherwise, of his do- 
mains, and even obliged him to draw upon his retain- 
ers and soldiers. Such enormous preparations were? 
of course, noised abroad. Now, it so happened that at 
one time Honda's father had been concerned in an in- 
surrection, or levy of arms, of certain members of the 
Buddhist sect to which he belonged, and had fought the 
great lyeyasii, whom afterwards he served so faithfully. 
Among the upholders of the faith were fighting monks, 
a variety of the militant church well known in the an- 
nals of Japan. At the close of this rebellion a band of 
these monks — something like a hundred — and a hun- 
dred other warriors were intrusted — Japanese-way — 
to the wardship of their former fellow partisan, and 
there they were handy for use. But they had retained 
something of both the clergyman and the warrior, keep- 
ing their priestly names and wearing their hair unshorn, 
and they refused to work, which in their eyes would 



have assimilated them to common soldiers and laborers. 
Thereupon, — and this was thought to be queer even in 
those days, — the lord of the castle invited them to go 
about the country and report upon certain matters in 
various places, at which places they were met by bodies 
of armed men, who put an end to them. I suppose that, 
according to strict views of the country and time, this 
was justifiable, though excessive, and this is one of the 
little pictures that I wish to frame. You see how the 
unpleasantness of the occasion might help the later stories 
of assassination. 

And now, in correcting another error, I can give you 
another picture of feudal Japan, a Japan now broken up, 
against whose last rulers, the Tokugawa, I hear daily so 
much. That lady in the story just given you, where 
she is the mother of lyemitsii and the concubine of his 
father, the shogun, was a very different person. 

Little lyemitsii was the legitimate son; moreover, the 
one who by date of birth was the probable heir, notwith- 
standing the preference shown by his father and his 
mother, Sogenin, for his younger brother. So that the 
succession was decided abruptly by the stern head of 
the family, lyeyasu. 

Great attention was paid by the grandfather, the great 
lyeyasu, to the education of this grandson. As a Jap- 
anese friend remarked, he believed that the important 
place in the generation was that of the third man. So 
that three distinguished noblemen were appointed his 
governors: Sakai, to teach benevolence; Doi, to teach 
wisdom ; Awoyama, to teach valor. Besides these great 
professors for the future, the little boy needed an im- 
mediate training by a governess good in every way. 
Kasuga, a married woman, the daughter of a well-known 
warrior of imperial descent who had lost his life in some 
conspiracy of the previous generation, was chosen by 



the government for the position. This was, perhaps, as 
great an honor as could be offered to any lady. Be- 
sides, there was an opportunity to clear the memory of 
her father. And she begged her husband to divorce 
her that^ she might be free to give all her life to this 
task. So devoted was she that the boy being at one 
time at the point of death, she offered herself to the 
gods for his recovery, vowing never to take any remedy. 
In her last illness she refused all medicine, and even 
when lyemitsii — now ruler — begged her to take a com- 
mended draught from his hand, she merely, out of polite- 
ness, allowed it to moisten her lips, saying that her work 
was done, that she was ready to die, and that her life 
had long ago been offered for the master. Nor would 
she allow the master to indulge her with regard to her 
own son. He was in exile, deservedly, and the shogun 
asked her permission to pardon him, in the belief of 
possible amendment. She refused, bidding lyemitsii 
to remember his lesson: that the law of the country was 
above all things, and that she had never expected such 
words from him. Moreover, that had he revoked the 
law for her, she could not die in peace. There is a Spar- 
tan politeness in all this, for which I think the stories 
worth saving to you. 

And they will help to give lyemitsu existence for 
you. He seems too vague in the temple dedicated to 
him at Nikko, even when we look at his bronze tomb 
and are told that he lies there packed in vermilion: our 
minds have become so far removed from the ways of 
thinking of Japan that a divinized mortal is an empty 
phrase for us. 

The details of such stories as I have told would not 
have seemed very antiquated across the seas, at their 
date, to those who remembered the days of Queen Eliz- 
abeth. The change has been as great in Europe as in 
14* 213 



Japan, but here it has been sudden, like the shifting of 
the scene of the theater; so that I can realize that when 
I was a boy such things as I am telling you would not 
have seemed very old-fashioned hereabouts. 

And now I make my notes in this little railroad coach, 
with the telegraph wires running in and out of the picture 
that I see through my window ; and, indeed, it is this im- 
plied contrast which I think has urged me most to tell 
you these more or less accurate anecdotes. 

If you wished to learn more about lyemitsii from the 
Japanese biography that I have with me, you might be 
puzzled. One has felt so distinctly the all-powerfulness 
of the men whose names and stories are the outer his- 
tory of Japan. So full is the impression forced upon 
one by the outside of the life of such a ruler as lyemitsu, 
bounded between the worship of his grandfather in 
golden temples and his own worship in almost equal 
splendors, and filled in by despotic use of power, that it 
leaves little place for the theory of all this power com- 
ing from the Mikado, who practically lived upon a 
narrow income apportioned to him by his lieutenant, 
the shogun. But in my little biography, written evi- 
dently to keep to present views and theories, I learn 
that toward the emperor our impatient hero was "faith- 
ful and humble" — and part of his story consists of visits 
to the emperor and of his receiving honors from this 
source of all honor. Thus, upon his coming of age, and 
having his hair trimmed, cut, and shaved in a manner 
to indicate this important event, the emperor sends a 
great court officer to compliment him, gives him the 
name of lyemitsij, honors him with the rank of Jtmii, 
and appoints him a Go Dainagon. Also, later he ap- 
points him to be the commander of the right wing of 
the imperial guard, and also superintendent of the Right 
Imperial Stable. Thereupon lyemitsu calls upon his 

214 



majesty at Kioto to pay his homage, and is made com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy, and moreover 
Naidaizin, with the rank of Shonii ; and he is also per- 
mitted to ride in an ox-carriage and to have armed 
body-guards; the latter privilege one that he had been 
obliged to enjoy perforce from early days, as we have 
seen. Whereupon, says my chronicler, lyemitsil had 
the honor of presenting to his majesty a yearly income 
of twenty thousand bags of rice; and this goes on until 
after his death, when the emperor gives him these titles 
for the future, the name of Daiken-In, the rank of Sho- 
ichi, and the premier office of Daijo-Daizin. " The favor 
of Five Imperial poems was also extended to the de- 
ceased." 

lyemitsil was fond of painting, and studied under 
the instruction of Kano Tanyu. He liked to paint the 
sacred mountain Fuji, and the same courteous chronic- 
ler tells me that some of his work was better than 
Tanyu's. But I should prefer seeing, before deciding; 
though Tanyu's imperturbable security makes one not 
a little bored. 

It is dark; we are approaching lyemitsii's city, Tokio, 
formerly Yedo, the city of the Tokugawa, now finally 
returned to the emperor, to whom they gave the thou- 
sands of bags of rice for income. We shall sleep at 
No. 22 Yokohama,^ and look out on the water again. 

1 All of Yokohama given to foreign settlement was laid out by number- 
ing, and retains it, apart from any other designation. 



215 



YOKOHAMA — KAMAKURA 

Yokohama, September i, 1886. 

NATURALLY we have again been wandering in 
Tokio ; I don't know that we have seen anything 
more, as we should certainly do if we had any energy in 
the heat. It is more natural to fritter away time in little 
things. Besides, there is a general feeling of discourage- 
ment accompanying the continuance of cholera ; and this 
is an unseasonable moment. Theaters are closed ; people 
are away. If I had to give an account of my time, I could 
not make it up. I know that I went to see an engraver 
on wood ; that he showed me his work, or his way of 
working, of which I knew a little ; that he made me drink 
some cherry-blossom tea, pretty to look at and of unseiz- 
able flavor; that he took me to see some of his work 
printed ; that I climbed up a ladder, somewhere into a 
hot room, where a man, naked but for his loin-cloth, sat 
slapping pieces of paper with a big brush upon the block 
previously touched with color; and that the dexterity 
with which he fitted the paper in proper place, so that the 
colors should not overlap, was as simple and primitive as 
his dress. 

Then I went to see the painter whose drawings had 
been engraved. I can't explain just why the arrangement 
of his courtyard seemed what I might have expected, and 
yet I still keep that impression without having noticed 
anything but the heat — the heat and the sun — the heat 
accumulated in this big dreary city of innumerable httle 
houses. 

216 



We explained at the door our request, and after a few 
moments we were told that the painter, though he was ill, 
would see us. We entered, and sat awhile, during which 
interval a boy pupil, occupied in copying sketches of the 
master, looked at us surreptitiously through a circular 
opening in the partition that made him a room. 

Our artist came in and sat down, evidently an ill man, 
and offered us the inevitable tea, and showed us his 
methods of preparation for the colored wood-blocks, and 
got down examples from the great pile of rolls and bun- 
dles of papers and drawings that filled one side of the 
room, among which I noticed many fragments of illus- 
trated English or American newspapers. And we dared 
not intrude any further, and departed — just as the con- 
versation had turned toward European art — with gifts 
of drawings from him and promise of exchange. 

No ; what we have really done is again to call at shops 
and begin over again the pursuit of bric-a-brac. It is so 
impossible to believe that we can find nothing in all the 
accumulation of all these shops. But even if it be so, the 
manner of hunting is an amusement, as is the mere seeing 
of all this stuff in its own home ; and the little attentions 
of the dealer, the being in a house with the privileges of 
tea and smoking, and a lazy war of attack and defense ; 
and the slow drawing out of pieces from bags and boxes, 
so that time, the great enemy, is put in the wrong. And 
then, what one is not expected to buy or look at is quite 
as good. I know of one place to which I have returned 
to look out of the skoji screens into the garden, where 
there is a big pottery statue of Kwannon. I don't intend 
to get it or to bargain about it, but I intend to buy other 
things under its influence ; perhaps the dahnio seats that 
we use in our visit, or the lanterns that light us when we 
stay late, whose oil will have to be emptied if they are 
sold. And there are places where things are for sale to 

217 



people versed in Chinese ways of thinking, but where 
amateurs on the wing like ourselves are not encouraged, 
and that is certainly seductive. Still, I am afraid that we 
shall miss a great deal that we wish to see, because of 
this dawdling in shops. 

And yet there is no sadness following these visits, such 
as has come upon us when we have gone to see some of 
the modern workers. From them we depart with no more 
hope. It is like some puzzles, like the having listened to 
an argument which you know is based on some inaccuracy 
that you cannot at the moment detect. This about the 
better, the new perfect work, if I can call it perfect, means 
only high finish and equal care. But the individual pieces 
are less and less individual ; there is no more surprise. 
The means or methods are being carried further and be- 
yond, so that one asks one's self, "Then why these methods 
at all ? " The style of this finer modern work is poorer, 
no longer connected with the greater design, as if ambi- 
tion was going into method and value of material. Just 
how far this is owing to us I cannot tell, but the market 
is largely European, and what is done has a vague ap- 
pearance of looking less and less out of place among our 
works, and has, as I said before, less and less suggestion 
of individuality. None of it would ever give one the slight 
shock of an exception, none of it would have the appear- 
ance which we know of our own best work, the feeling 
that we are not going to see more of it. This statement 
applies to the best work ; the more common work is 
merely a degradation, the using of some part of the 
methods ; just enough to sell it, and to meet some easily 
defined immediate commercial needs. I saw the begin- 
nings years ago, and I can remember one of our great 
New York dealers marking on his samples the colors that 
pleased most of his buyers, who themselves again were to 
place the goods in Oshkosh or Third Avenue. All other 

218 



colors or patterns were tabooed in his instructions to the 
makers in Japan. This was the rude mechanism of the 
change, the coming down to the worst pubHc taste, which 
must be that of the greatest number at any given time ; 
for commerce in such matters is of the moment : the sale 
of the wooden nutmeg, good enough until used. Have I 
not seen through the enormous West any arnount of the 
worst stained glass, all derived from what I made myself, 
some years ago, as a step toward a development of greater 
richness and delicacy in the "art of glass"? And my 
rivalry of precious stones had come to this ignoble end and 
caricature. The commercial man, or the semi-professional 
man whom we call the architect, must continually ask for 
something poorer, something to meet the advancing flood 
of clients and purchasers, something more easily placed 
anywhere, at random, without trouble or responsibility, 
and reflecting the pubHc — as it is more easy to fit in a 
common tile than the most beautiful Persian one — in the 
average of buildings made themselves to meet the same 
common demand. And so with all applied beauty ; the 
degradation is always liable to occur. 

Japan is an exceptional place for studying these 
changes ; we can see them gradually evolved — all as if 
by vivisection of some morbid anatomy. The study of 
these diseases and infections of art at home is attended 
with moral distress and intellectual disgust, because we 
are all in part responsible ; but here we can see it disin- 
terestedly, and speculate dispassionately upon the degra- 
dation of good things resulting from the demands of 
business. 

Were it quite in the line of what you expect to-day 
from me, I might make out for you the Hues of the old 
scheme of civilization under which former work was done. 
The feudal organization of Japan divided the country into 
provinces of distinct habits and modes of work — more or 

219 



less isolated, partly by want of easy or general communi- 
cation, partly by the political interests of their rulers and 
of the main government, partly by the permanence of the 
provincial feeling which prevented the inhabitant of one 
place moving to another to find occupation and employ- 
ment. The rule of the idea of the family, which is still 
great in Japan, kept things in the same order, preserved 
all traditions, and at the same time offered opportunities, 
by adoption, to individuals who might increase or keep 
up the family reputation or influence. Here, too, I sup- 
pose, is the basis of a certain dignity and personal inde- 
pendence in the manners of the people which runs in with 
their courtesy. Every one must have known what was 
expected of him, and have felt quite free after that duty 
paid. Within this courtesy that I see all about me, I feel 
something of what we might call democratic, for want of 
a better name. I recognize it in the manner of the subor- 
dinate, who takes an apparently personal interest in 
things, after his duty of politeness and obedience is paid. 
And though there was no absolute caste, as we under- 
stand it, except in such a case as that of the Eta, the lines 
of life were strictly laid out, until the new laws, which have 
made things open more or less to all.-^ With these changes, 
with disturbances of fortune, with the loss of power and 
of income on the part of the small rulers, with a country 
all laid out now in *^ prefectures," with the necessarily in- 
creasing power of *' bureaucracy," the whole tone of indi- 
vidual life must change, must become less independent in 
any one thing, more independent apparently in general 
— must flatten out, if I may so express it. And the arti- 
san will have to follow the course of trade and its fluctua- 
tions until some general level has been estabHshed — some 

IThe gentry, the old Samurai, however, still constitute the governing class 
to-day apparently, and the aristocratic spirit stands in the way of indiscrimi- 
nate rise of the plebeians. 

220 



general level of manufactures, I mean, for there is no 
general level possible in art. Something will happen 
which will resemble the ways of France, where art still 
exists, but w^here things have been so managed that any 
artist out of the general level has had a very bad time of 
it — the whole live forces of the nation, in trade and "bu- 
reaucracy," being against his living easily any life of his 
own. When the forces of traditional taste and skill and 
habits of industry now existing in Japan shall have been 
organized anew, Japan, like France, will have undoubt- 
edly a great part to play in industrial trade. 

Art may live or may not in the future here ; nothing 
of what has been done elsewhere to grow it or foster it 
has made it stronger. It has always come by the grace 
of God, to be helped when it is here, or choked out ; but 
no gardener has ever seen its seed. Some of my friends 
in Japan are plunged in a movement to save what there 
is of the past in art, to keep its traditions, to keep teach- 
ing in the old ways, without direct opposition to what 
may be good in the new. They see around them the 
breaking up of what has been fine, and the new influences 
producing nothing, not even bad imitations of Europe. I 
know too little upon what their hopes are based, but 
O , who is in the " tendency," sails with us for Amer- 
ica and Europe, and I may find out more through him. 

Meanwhile he is to inquire with Professor F into the 

education of the artist and artisan with us, and to see 
" how we do it." I am deeply interested in their under- 
taking, perhaps the most remarkable of all similar inqui- 
ries — if honestly conducted. But I see vague visions of 
distorted values, of commercial authorities looked upon 
as artistic, of the same difficulties, for instance, that I might 
meet if I wished now to make an official report, not to the 
public or to government, — that is always easy, — but to 
myself, who have no special interest in being misled, of 



the methods of art and industry that have been and exist 
in the East. 

. Three days are wasted. I do scarcely any 
work, and there comes to me, as a punishment, a feehng 
of the Httleness of a great deal here, coming, I think, from 
the actual smallness of many details ^ of the sizes of the 
little houses, of the little gardens, of the frail materials, of 
the set manners. 

. To-morrow we shall go to something great, to 
the great statue, the ''Daibutsu," at Kamakura, and per- 
haps we may even push as far as Enoshima, but I doubt 
it. It will be our last day, as we shall sail the following 
morning for Kobe. As I run along the streets of Tokio 
in the afternoon, with the feeling that I have tried to set 
down, of things having narrowed as they become familiar, 
comes the excited melancholy of departure, and this same 
ugliness and prettiness have a new value as I look upon 
them for the last time. I sit in the little tea-house near the 

station, waiting for A , and drink the ''powdered 

tea," which tastes better than ever, as a stirrup-cup. And 
I do not resent the familiarity of a big Chinaman, proud 
of his English, and of national superiority here in size and 
commercial value, who addresses me and seeks to find out 
whether I, too, have a commercial value. My answers 
puzzle him, and he leaves me uncertain as to quantities, 
and walks off with the impudent majesty of his fellows 
among this smaller and less commercial race. 

At dinner I see at the table near me a Japan- 
ese gentleman, not very young, dining with his wife and 
another lady, who, I am told, is a well-known geisha. 
This information I receive from my more or less trusty 
courier, who also gives me some confused intimation that 
this gentleman had participated in the murder of Richard- 
son, the EngHshman, many years ago, under the old 
regime, for which murder somebody else was decapitated. 

222 



The wife is correct and immovable, the geisha animated, 
with a great deal of color and charm. A German or Rus- 
sian sits at another table, heavy, diplomatic, thick-bearded; 
the gei-sha recognizes him, rises, goes over to his table, 
and bends very low before him, almost kneeling; then 
speaks courteously and animatedly, as if in compliment, 
to which the diplomat, without turning his }iead, says a 
word or two distantly. Then the gei-sha bends again down 
to the table, and walks respectfully backward, and then 
swings back into her seat. I am amused by this complete 
inversion of our own habits, and am reminded of the man- 
ners and assiduous attentions of our men at the theaters 
when they call on the indifferent fair. I see, too, that the 
points of attack and defense must be different. 

The heat was still intense even in the night, within fifty 
yards of the sea ; we went down to the quay and hired a 
boat with man and boy, to drift out into the hazy moon- 
light. The boy did the main part of the work : we lay in 
the boat, seeing nothing but this little body, and the flap- 
ping of its garments, and everything else a vague space 
of lightened shadow. We rowed or sculled far away, 
came near to a shore where there was a tea-house, for 
women opened its closed sides and, revealed by their lan- 
terns, came down and called to us. But we pulled off, 
and later, in a far-off ocean with no shore nor sky, came 
across a little summer-house built on piles, through which 
the volume of the sea pressed and recoiled. Nothing 
could be more abandoned, more improbable. There was 
nothing in sight. Had we entered the little paviHon, and 
moored our boat or let it float away, we might have felt 
as if out in the distant sea. We were the center of a globe 
of pearl ; no edges nor outlines of anything visible, except 
a faint circular light above, from which the pearly color 
flowed tremulously, and a few wrinkles of silver and dark 
below ; no sound but a gentle sway of water. And we 

223 



came home, having had the sense of the possibility of in- 
tense isolation in a fairyland of twilight. 

At Sea, off Izu, September 3. 
We sailed this morning on the French steamer. It is 
now quite late in the afternoon. The Pacific keeps its 
blue under us, and a blue sea haze separates us from 
the violets and greens of the mountains of the shore, be- 
hind which the light is slowly sinking. All is gentle and 
soothing; but our captain says that he is not sure, and 
that '^ hors d' Izu notes aiirons la hoiile du Pacifiqiie'' 
While waiting for this long, angry roll, I shall tell you 
about yesterday, of which there was little — for we had 
undertaken too much. 

We left rather too late, and drove a good way in the 
foggy morning, passing much culture, and under many 
trees, of all of which I remember little. It was late when 
we stopped to breakfast at the little inn from which we were 
to be taken by kuruma, first to the big statue of Buddha, 
then wherever we might have time to go. We left the 
place, and reached the hollow between hills where the 
statue dwells, after passing through a curious deep cut- 
ting right through the rocks, which marks some old ap- 
proach to the former city ; for these hollows and fields 
were once covered by a great city, the city of Kamakura, 
the city of Yoritomo, and the great statue now out of 
doors was once in a temple of that city. Places are shown 
you in the dells : this was where was once the mansion 
of such a hero, here was that of the administrators of the 
miHtary rule in the fifteenth century ; here stood the pal- 
ace where, with his two hundred and eighty last follow- 
ers, such a one retired to perform harakiri, and perish in 
the flames, when overwhelming forces had captured the 
great city which was once the other capital of Japan. 
Trees and ordinary culture cover these spaces now. 

224 



And here was the temple. Sixty-three pillars sup- 
ported its roof, and many of their bases are still there. 
But a great inundation from the sea, now some miles dis- 
tant, destroyed the temple and its adjacent buildings. 
This happened as far back as the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and the temple has not been rebuilt. The desire of 
Yoritomo to see the great statue made during his lifetime 
was not granted ; but one of his waiting-ladies, after his 
death, collected the necessary funds, and it appears to 
have been cast in 1252 by Ono Go-ro-ye-mon. I know 
nothing about him, but if he be the artist, it is pleasant to 
record his name. The image is made of bronze cast in 
pieces brazed together and finished with the chisel. It is 
nearly fifty feet high as it sits ; and if these points help 
you to its size, learn that its eyes, for instance, are four 
feet long, the length across its lap from knee to knee is 
thirty-five feet, and the circumference of the thumb is 
fully three feet. But these measures, though they show a 
large scale and great size, do not indicate a proportion, as 
we should understand it. The w^hole modeling is for 
effect, and the means and methods of the modeUng are 
simple and elementary. Like all work done on archaic 
principles, the main accentuations are overstated, and 
saved in their relations by great subtleties in the large 
surfaces. It is emphatically modeled for a colossus ; it is 
not a little thing made big, like our modern colossal stat- 
ues ; it has always been big, and would be so if reduced 
to life-size. 

We saw it first from the side through trees, as we ran 
rapidly to the front, where are a temple gate, and a long 
courtyard still in order, that leads up to the statue. From 
the side one can see how it bends over, and rough as it is 
from behind, the impression of something real was strong 
as its gray form moved through the openings of the trees. 
The photographs must long have made you know it, and 
15 225 



they also show the great base and the immense temple 
ornaments that stand upon it at the feet of the statue. 
They show also the Httle lodge at the side, where the 
priest in attendance lives, and gives information, and sells 
photographs and takes them, and generally acts as show- 
man. ' We took many photographs from new points of 
view, and we even removed the thatch of a penthouse so 
as to get nearer and under the statue to the side ; and I 
painted also, more to get the curious gray and violet tone 
of the bronze than to make a faithful drawing, for that 
seemed impossible in the approaching afternoon. We did 
not know how long a time we had spent lingering about 
it. The clouds had begun to open, and a faint autumnal 
light filled the little hollow, which has only small trees, 
and no imposing monuments like the great cryptomeria, 
which alone might seem fit to grow about here. All, on 
the contrary, was gentle and small — the fines of the hills, 
the trees, the garden plants about us : we might have 
been anywhere. Perhaps it is just as well ; the whole 
impression comes from the statue, with the only objection 
or detraction that we can get near enough to it to see the 
mechanism, the means, and details of its expression. An 
accident, the breaking of its prison temple by a great cat- 
aclysm of nature, a great wave of the sea coming far 
inland and destroying the great building, has given to the 
statue something that it could never have had to the 
physical eye — in the degree it has now. Now, freed 
from its shrine, the figure sits in contemplation of entire 
nature, the whole open world that we feel about us, or its 
symbols — the landscape, the hills, the trees and fields, 
the sky and its depths, the sunshine playing before the 
eyes of the seated figure, the air in which dance all the 
things that live in air, from the birds that fly to the atoms 
of dust, and the drifting leaves and blossoms, the confu- 
sion or the peace of the elements, the snow in crystals, 

226 



and the rain in drops. All this world of ours, which to the 
contemplative mind is but a figurative fragment of the 
universe, lies before the mental gaze of the Buddha. Un- 
winking, without change of direction, he looks forever; 
his will is forever subdued and held beneath him, as his 
fingers pressed together indicate his freedom from all the 
disturbances of that past of being which is subject to time 
and change, and his cognition, undisturbed, envelops and 
images the universe in final contemplation. 

Astounding success of the artist in what he has really 
done, for there is no trace of means ; the sum of realism 
is so slight, the conventional has so great a part; each 
detail is almost more of an ornament than of a represen- 
tation. One almost believes that the result may be partly 
accidental : that, as one cannot fathom the reason of the 
expressiveness of a countenance, or of the influence of a 
few musical notes, even though one knows the mechan- 
ism, so it seems difficult to grant that there was once a 
choice in the other mind that caused it, that there were 
once many paths opened before it. 

And still more do I believe that the accident of the 
great tempest has given a yet more patent and subtle 
meaning to the entire figure. Once upon a time its de- 
tails, indeed, if not its entirety, must have looked more 
delicate in the reflected light of the temple building, when 
the upper part of the figure was bathed in mysterious 
gloomy light, while the lower glittered in answer to the 
openings of the doors. But could anything ever have 
rivaled the undecidedness of this background of veiled 
sky and shifting blue, which makes one believe at times 
that the figure soon must move ? As one looks longer 
and longer at it, with everything around it gently chang- 
ing, and the shadows shifting upon its surface, the tension 
of expectation rises to anxiety. The trees rustle and wave 
behind it, and the light dances up and down the green 

227 



boughs with the wind ; it must move — but there is no 
change, and it shall sit forever. 

As we left, and I walked down the long pavement in 
front of the statue, in the early autumn sunshine and the 
rising freshness of the wind, I turned again and again, 
each time with the realization that the statue was still sit- 
ting, until we turned out of sight, a vague, unreasonable 
sense of having left it alone accompanying me, until other, 
different, light, and gay impressions broke the influence 
and allowed me to think of what I had seen as a work of 
art, such as I could understand and decompose — and, if 
I wished, make also. 

And we lunched at Hase, near by, and from the com- 
fortable inn could see on the gray hill above the temple 
of Kuwannon, and its red buildings and balustrades. 
After a very long lunch, we walked up to the temple, and 
from the platform in front looked toward the afternoon 
sea right before us, and the plain of Kamakura. Then we 
entered, and were taken in behind the great screen doors 
to a narrow but high place — lighted only from the little 
entrance — wherein stood right by us and over us a 
standing figure of the divinity, all golden in the dark. It 
is over thirty feet high, and whether it be great art or 
not, — for the darkness was too great to judge of form, — 
the glitter of a smile of gold far up above our heads, in 
the obscurity of the roof, was an impression that, even 
so near to the great statue out of doors, remains distinct. 
It was late afternoon ; we dared look at no more statues, 
nor at relics of warriors of Kamakura, and started for the 
beach, partly with the hope of seeing Fuji behind us. But 
all was veiled in the sky ; we walked along the beach, our 
kiirumas dragging behind us, and crossed a little stream, 

and while A bathed in, and thereby took possession 

of, the Pacific, I walked up the sand-hills toward the little 
village at the end of the strand. As I came near it, an 

228 



unfortunate distorted being, scarred with some leprous 
disease, plunged toward me in the twilight from some 
vague opening in the hills, and begged piteously, follow- 
ing me afterward with a thankful wail of " O Danna San ! 
Danna San ! Danna San ! " that I hear yet. We reentered 
our kurumas and drove in triumph to the inn of the little 
village. I say in triumph : / drove in triumph, observed 
of all observers — I had my usual costume and was 

clothed. A , rather than wait to get dry, rode along 

with only a partial covering of yukatta, and attracted no 
attention. Had he had nothing on at all, he would have 
been still more in keeping with many of our neighbors. 
Night was falHng, nothing more could be done; we got 
back to our carriage and horses, and drove back in the 
warm darkness to Yokohama. And I close as we begin 
to feel the roll, *' la houle du Pacifique." 



229 



KIOTO 

September i6. 

WE came into Kioto from Osaka, by rail, one fine 
afternoon. I had a half-childish hope of being sur- 
prised, a memory of days when, a boy, I read of the great 
forbidden city. Only a few years ago it was still forbid- 
den, and now the little respectable car was hurrying us 
there as prosily as older life translates the verse of our 
early dreams. We were in September heat and glare. 
We passed over wide spaces of plain, edged by sharp 
mountains, looking hot and barren ; through great plan- 
tations and stretches of green, with here and there a temple 
half hidden, — and over dried river-beds. 

The station closed all views on our arrival, and the sud- 
den transfer to streets showing no European influences 
was as if we had passed through a city's walls. 

The first sensation was merely the usual one of a whirl 
through innumerable buildings, low, of wood, and more 
or less the same ; extremely wide streets, all very clean ; 
many people ; a great bridge across the stony bed of a 
river almost dry ; then some trees and little gardens and 
corners of temples with heavy roofs, as we turned through 
little roads and drove up to the gate of the hotel enclosure, 
which is placed on the edge of the outside hills and looks 
down upon Kioto. We were high up, in rooms looking 
over trees just below ; next to us the corner of temple 
grounds that rounded away out of sight. 

Early on most mornings I have sat out on our wide 
veranda and drawn or painted from the great panorama 

230 



before me — the distant mountains making a great wall 
lighted up clearly, with patches of burning yellow and 
white and green, against the western sky. The city lies 



""^'^'if^?'' 



M 








KIOTO IN FOG— MORNING. 



in fog, sometimes cool and gray ; sometimes golden and 
smoky. The tops of pagodas and heavy roofs of temples 
lift out of this sea, and through it shine innumerable little 
white spots of the plastered sides of houses. Great ave- 
nues, which divide the city in parallel lines, run off into 
haze ; far away always shines the white wall of the city 
castle ; near us, trees and houses and temples drop out 
occasionally from the great violet shadows cast by the 
mountain behind us. Before the city wakes and the air 
clears, the crows fly from near the temples toward us, as 
the great bell of the temple sounds, and we hear the call 
of the gongs and indefinite waves of prayer. Occasion- 
ally a hawk rests uneasily on the thin branches below. 
Then the sun eats up the shadows, and the vast view 
unites in a great space of plain behind the monotony of 

231 



the repeated forms of the small houses, broken by the 
shoulders of the roofs and pagodas of many temples. But 
near us are many trees and tea-houses and gardens, and 
we are as if in the country. 

We have worked conscientiously as mere sightseers 
until all is confused as with an indigestion of information. 
I could hardly tell you anything in a reasonable sequence, 
for in and out of what I go to see runs a perpetual warp 
of looking at curios, of which occupation I feel every day 
disgusted and ashamed, and to which I return again as a 
gambler might, with the hope of making it all right with 
my conscience by some run of luck. This began on our 
very first day, when at our first visit to an excellent merch- 
ant, for whom we had letters, we spent the hours after din- 
ner looking at the bric-a-brac brought together for our 
purchase or amusement. We had had the presentation 
and disappearance of the ladies of the house after their 
customary genuflections ; and a European dinner, waited 
upon, in part, by lesser clients of our entertainer. Mean- 
while his one little girl sat beside him, half behind him, 
and occasionally betrayed her secret love for him by 
gently pressing his leg with the sole of her little stock- 
inged foot. Japanese children are one of the charms of 
Japan, and this one is a type of their stillness ; her sweet, 
patient face watching the talk of the elders, no change in 
her eyes revealing anything, but the whole person taking 
everything in — the little delicate person, which disap- 
peared in a dress and sash not unlike her elders', except 
for color. Then there was a visit to another merchant, in 
the oldest house of the city, built low, so that none might 
perchance look down upon the sovereign lord's procession. 
Display of family relics — marriage gifts and complete 
trousseaux of the past ; marriage dresses of the same 
time, symbolical in color, — white, red, and finally black. 
We are told to notice that the gold and silver fittings of 

232 



precious lacquers are wanting, because many years ago 
some sumptuary edict of the Tokugawa government sud- 
denly forbade the display or use of the precious metals in 
excess — a gradation to be determined by inspecting offi- 
cials — for persons who, like merchants, should not pre- 
tend to pass a certain line. 

Then, owing to other letters, we have paid our devoirs 
to the governor, and called, and subsequently received 
the polite attentions of his intelligent secretary. Under 
his guidance we visit the School of Art and see boys 
sketching, and enter rooms of drawing devoted respect- 
ively to the schools of the North and the South. 

And we visit the school for girls, where the cooking- 
class is one bloom of peach-like complexions, like a great 
fruit-basket; where the ladylike teacher of gymnastics 
and child etiquette wears divided skirts ; where the rooms 
for the study of Chinese classics and history contain a 
smaller number of fair students, looking more reason- 
able and much paler; and where, on admiring in the 
empty painting-class a charming sketch of Kioto wharves, 
like the work of some lesser Rico, I am told that the fair 
artist has disappeared — married, just as if it had hap- 
pened with us at home. But with a difference worth 
weighing gravely, for our guide and teacher informs me 
that the aim of this education is not to make girls inde- 
pendent, but rather to make more intelligent and useful 
daughters, sisters, or wives. And in this old-fashioned 
view I come to recognize the edges of a great truth. 

Then temples, for Kioto is a city of temples ; and every 
day some hours of hot morning have been given to visits, 
all of which make a great blur in my mind. The general 
memory is impressive and grand ; the details run one into 
the other. 

Thus we are paying dear for sightseeing, but it is im- 
possible to set aside the vague curiosity which hates to 

233 



leave another chance unturned. And when again shall I 
return, and see all these again ? Now, however, all is as- 
sociated with heat and glare, and with the monotony of 
innumerable repeated impressions, differing only in scale. 
Still, probably, when I shall have left I shall recall more 
clearly and separately the great solemn masses of un- 
painted wood, for which early forests have been spoiled ; 
the great size of their timbers, the continuous felicity of 
their many roofings, the dreary or delicate solemnity of 
their dark interiors, the interminable recurrence of paint- 
ings by artists of the same schools ; the dry and arid 
court-yards, looked at, in this heat of weather, from the 
golden shadows, where are hidden sometimes lovely old 
statues, sometimes stupid repetitions ; images of the whole 
race of earlier shoguns ; the harsh features of the great 
Taiko Sama, the sleek and subtle face of the great lye- 
yasu, or the form of K'wan-on, carved by early art, 
leaning her cheek on long fingers; or noble, tapestried 
figures, rich in color and intensity of spotting, painted by 
the Buddhist Cho-Den-Su. . . . 

I should like to describe the temple ceilings, in which 
are set the lacquered coffers of the war junk of Taiko, or 
of the state carriage of his wife. . . . 

I have sketched in his reception hall, peopled to-day 
only by specters of the past — with gilt and painted panels 
on which may have looked the great lyeyasu, who was to 
succeed him, and the blessed Xavier, and the early Jesuits, 
and the chivalric Christian lords who were to die on great 
battlefields. And close to a great room, where many 
monks bent over peaceful books, the little closet, with 
dainty shelves, in which Taiko looked at the heads of his 
dead enemies, brought there for inspection. 

And we have gone up into the plain little pavilion, 
sacred to the ceremonies of tea-drinking, where the rough 
and shrewd adventurer offered to grim, ambitious warriors, 

234 



as honorific guerdon for hard service, the simple Httle 
cups of glazed clay that collectors prize to-day. 

I run over these associated details, because certainly 
the question of the great buildings is too weighty for my 
present mood. But the greater part of the romance of 
Japan is called up at every moment by what we see just 
now. 

At Uji, among the tea gardens, we stopped on our way 
to Nara, the older capital, to see the temple of Bio-do-in 
and its '' Phoenix hall," built in wood, that is now over 
eight hundred years old ; its statues ; its half-defaced 
paintings of the " Paradise in the West " ; its high, dusty 
ceiling, inlaid with mother-of-pearl ; and its sweet-toned 
bell. 

And we saw the legendary bow of Yorimasa, which 
you will recall with me whenever you see a picture of 
the bow of the moon, across which flies the Japanese 
cuckoo. It was here that he defended Uji bridge, with a 
forlorn hope, against the army of the Taira, that his prince 
might have time to escape ; and here, at Bio-do-in, while 
his last followers kept off the rush of the enemy, Yorimasa 
ran himself through with his sword, as a final duty paid to 
the honor of Japan. 

On this side of the bridge, as I walked up other temple 
steps, hedged in by trees, with our friend Oye-San, the 
violet butterflies and blue dragon-flies crossed our path in 
every bar of sunshine. 

At the monastery of Kurodani, on the edge of the 
mountain near us, are shown the graves of Nawozane and 
of the young Atsumori, whom he killed in battle. We 
are shown the portrait of the victim, painted in sorrow by 
the victor, and the pine-tree still stands upon which the 
warrior hung his armor when, tormented by remorse, he 
carried out his vow of never more bearing arms, and 
sought this place to enter religion and pray for the soul 

235 



of the youth he had unwillingly slain. Strange flower of 
human pity, blooming out of the blood of civil wars like 
some story of Italy in the coeval day of St. Francis. 

At that time the great war of the Genji and the Heike 
was devastating Japan, and in 1184, in a great battle by 
the sea, Yoshitsune, the hero of romance of Japan, serving 
his brother Yoritomo, w^hose story I told you at Nikko, 
defeated the Heike, and the '* death of Atsumori " took 
place. This deHcate boy, a prince of the Heike, scarcely 
sixteen years old, met in the battle the veteran Nawozane. 
Atsumori had fought bravely on the shore, having at first 
fled, and then returned, forcing his horse through the 
water. The greater strength of the older man prevailed, 
and the child fell under the blows of the powerful man-at- 
arms. When Nawozane disengaged his enemy's helmet, 
intending to take off the usual trophy of a head, the sight 
of the youthful face recalled his own son slain in battle, 
and he hesitated in inflicting on other parents a suffering 
like his own. But if he did not kill him others would, 
and his reputation would be endangered. He killed him, 
Atsumori bravely meeting death, and bore off the terrible 
trophy. Then, in the revulsion of remorse, he vowed him- 
self to a religious life ; he restored to Atsumori's father 
the son's fair head and his armor, and, going to Kioto, be- 
came a disciple in religion of the holy Honen Shonin, the 
founder of Kurodani ; and there, near its lovely garden, 
are the tombs of the man and of the boy. 

Or, while we are thinking of heads cut off, I pass again 
and again a lofty monument, under great trees, on a wide 
avenue beautifully macadamized, and kept in the trim of 
our Central Park, along which ride officers in Western 
uniform, or pass the police, in a dress whose type is bor- 
rowed from at least three European states. Under this 
tomb are buried the ears and noses of the Koreans slain 
in the wars that Hideyosni waged at the end of the 

236 



sixteenth century. They were carried here as more 
convenient than the heads, the usual evidence of 
work well done, brought by the warriors to their com- 
mander. The memory of what the great pile means 
serves to confuse still more my admiration of the ultra- 
modern success of the wide carriage drive on which it 
stands. 

Osaka, September i8. 

We have come to Osaka to spend an entire day in 
bric-a-brac : to arrive early at the big shop ; to have tea 
offered us in the little back room of the merchant, which 
looks out and steps out upon his garden of a few trees 
and little pebbly walks and some stone lanterns — a 
garden that is for us, which his own may or may not 
be. Then cigars, and pieces of porcelain brought 
from the storehouses ; then more tea, and an in- 
spection of the many rooms full of odds and ends. 
Then more tea, and more pieces slowly and reluctantly 
drawn from the storehouse, as if we could not be so 
unreasonable ; then lunch and tea, always in the house ; 
then adjournment to the upper rooms, when the hun- 
dreds of kakemonos are unrolled, one after the other, 
to a crescendo of exasperation. Then rediscussion of 
matters below-stairs and visits to other rooms full of 
wares not spoken of before ; then more tea, and the last 
pieces grudgingly produced from the same occult store- 
houses ; purchases amid final bewilderment ; tea again, 
and departure. 

We had come to Osaka on our way back from Nara, 
and we again return to Kioto, which we left three days 
ago. The trip to Nara was fatiguing and dehghtful, and 
I should like to recall it for you, but I have no time 
and have made no notes ; and, besides, my memories 
are again beginning to merge one into another, and they 

237 



themselves to blend with what I see in Kioto. But cer- 
tainly something floats over, which a few Hnes can give. 

We were out in our kurumas early in the morning, each 
with three runners. We found Oye-San waiting for us 
patiently, outside at Inari, where he had expected us from 
the earliest morning. It is from him that I get the little 
clay fox, given me for good luck, in a partnership with 
the one he retained. I need not speak of the heat. The 
roads were dusty and dry where they were not muddy and 
wet, in the country paths we took. We passed the edge 
of the city, which ends suddenly in rice fields, occupying 
what were once streets and houses. For Kioto is only a 
part of what it has been ; and even when it was larger, 
not so many years back, it must still have been only the 
remainder of a greater past. 

As we get into what is really the country, passing 
from broad road to narrow tracks, our runners sometimes 
lifted us over soft, wet places, or bumped us over narrow 
ditches, or guided us, at full tilt, on the edges of the 
stones that are bridges. Sometimes more patiently we 
halted to allow the files of black bulls to meander past 
us, dragging loads on wheels or carrying bales. 

Rarely we met peasants, and then usually women, some- 
times with horses of a larger breed than that we saw last 
month in the east. Once, among rice fields in the basin 
of a circle of low hills, I saw the grove which covers the 
tomb of some divine emperor of early times. As we 
circled around the slope, far away from this soHtary oasis 
of trees, vv^e could see the grove on every side, finished and 
complete and rounded by time, as if sculptured in nature 
from some of those sketches that Japanese artists make for 
carving when they give all four sides, and the bottom, and 
the top, on a single page. Nothing else, but perhaps some 
uninscribed stone, marks the tomb of emperors, dotted 
about the plains of this oldest province of Japan. Strange 

238 



enough, even in this strange country, is this evidence of 
the extreme of simpHcity in death, as in Hfe, of the oldest 
hne of Oriental despots, absolute lords and masters, ever- 
present patterns of the deity, who make this one solitary 




PEASANT WOMAN — THRESHER. 



exception of simplicity in history. It is as if Japan itself 
was their tomb, as if they passed back into the nature of 
which their divine ancestors were gods -^ the gods of the 
sun and of the earth. 



239 



Blue hills and pagodas, and temples in the distance, 
and we came into Nara, which is but a breath, a ruin, a 
remnant of what it was. I had been told so often of the 
place, as a ruin among rice fields, that I was unprepared 
for the beautiful lay-out of what remains — for the well- 
planned roads and avenues, such as may well have be- 
longed to some great capital, such as would have been 
heard of by travelers who, returning in days of Charle- 
magne from other Eastern cities to Byzantium, might 
have talked of Zipango. 

Nothing remains but a few buildings, belonging to 
temples, but their approaches are splendid, even though 
there be often nothing more than the general grading and 
disposition. I should have written to you from our inn, 
where I looked, in the evening and morning, toward the 
slopes of distant hills, and heard, out of the darkness, 
the sound of the great bell which rang first some eleven 
centuries ago, and the singing of the frogs in the fields 
which were once a city. It is now too late to begin to 
describe anything of what I saw ; anything of temple 
buildings, from one of which to another we wandered, or 
of the old statues and relics, or of the religious dances 
of young girls which we looked at, standing or sitting 
near the balustrade of the dancing-shed, while inside, in 
the greater shade, they moved to the music and hymns of 
the priests — red and white figures, with long tresses of 
black hair and chaplets of flowers ; with faces all painted 
white, and brilliant, indifferent eyes that saw me sketch- 
ing clearly, however, and hands that waved, in a cadence 
of routine, fans and bunches of little bells with long 
streamers of violet, blue, green, red, and white. Or of 
the great park-like avenue, that made me think of Eng- 
land, through which still wander tame deer, as did those 
that, long ago, served as models for Okio the painter. I 
fear that what I have seen will remain only as an em- 

240 



broidery upon the stuff that my memory tries to un- 
roll. 

It was late on a sweltering afternoon when we managed 
to leave Nara, and we reached Horiuji for too short a 
visit ; for we were due in Osaka the next day. We 
wandered in the late afternoon and evening through its 
courts, kindly received by the priests, for whom we had 
the recommendation of a friendly name. 

At least I had time to see the Golden Hall, one of the ^ 
earliest buildings, now more than twelve centuries and a \ 
half old, and the noble paintings on its w^alls attributed to I 
some famous sculptor of that day. Their placid elegance, 
the refinement of their lines, their breath of religious 
peace, explained those claims to a solemn and glorious 
past for Japan, which look like a conventional exagger- 1 
ation in a to-day that is delicate and small and dry. 

The recall of Greek perfection was not forced, and"! 
while still vaguely unwilling to confuse one excellence / 

by referring to another, I could not help again think 1 

ing of the Greek and of Tanagra images, when I saw, by 
the light of the torches, in the great pagoda, as old as 
the great hall, groups modeled in clay by the same old 
sculptor, whose name is given to the paintings — Amida, 
and Kuwan-on, and Monju, and the scenes of the death 
of Buddha. An admirable antiquity was to be the con- 
tinuous impression of the evening, carried out into our 
last looks at the Treasure House. Its very air of an old 
New England barn or crib raised upon posts, its rough 
red painting, the high wooden steps of entrance, the gi- 
gantic wooden latch-key with which the guardian priest 
fumbled at its door, gave the note of extreme early sim- 
plicity — the feehng of a persisting indifference to the 
adornments and changes of centuries of fashions. 

It has been useless all along to detail anything, but 
the impressions of the last things seen remain with me as 
16 241 



types of all. For there hung on the old walls of the 
Treasure House a framed banner, once carried in an- 
cient battles, its brocaded pattern exactly like that which 
we know in Babylonian art: the circles with the liHes 
between, and in each circle the Assyrian monarch 
struggling with lions — imitation or original of coeval 
Sassanian Persia, I suppose, but housed here all these 
thousand years, and in its persistence of pattern connect- 
ing with that heavy and oppressive antiquity of Nineveh 
which knows nothing older than itself for our story, 
except oldest Egypt. 

But I was yet to find something old that would be 
directly meant for me, — a painting by the legendary 
painter of Japan, the Cimabue of a thousand years ago, 
inheritor or student of still older Chinese art — Kose-no- 
Kanaoka. 

The painting is still in fair condition, though injuries 
of time reveal, as usual, the methods used by the painter. 
And it was a delight in me, in this mood of veneration 
for past greatness, to recognize in the veilings and se- 
quences of this painting of the lotus methods I had used 
myself, working at such distance of time and place, when 
I had tried to render the tones and the transparency 
of our fairy water-lily ; and I know you will forgive the 
superstitious sense of approval of my re-inventions from 
this indefinite past of art. 

We wandered among the buildings until night had set 
in ; we signed on the register of visitors, and contributed 
a small sum to the repairs of these decaying reHcs of the 
greatness of Japan ; we received some little gifts of im- 
pressions and prints in acknowledgment, and then rested 
in the neighboring inn, waited upon by fat, good-natured 
tea-girls, most certainly belonging to to-day. 

We had now to take a long night ride, and at length 

242 



we rushed out into the moonhght, our fourteen runners 
appearing and disappearing as we came in and out of the 
shadows in the long procession of our train. 

We whirled past the houses of the small town, indis- 
creetly close to the paper screens, lighted from within, 
against which were profiled the shadows of faces, some- 
times with pipes or cups lifted to their lips oi: the outlines 
of coiffures piled up on the head — all pictures more Jap- 
anese than their very originals ; then between rounded 
hills on which stood masses of maple-trees ; then near to 
empty spaces of water ; then sank into dark hollows, at 
the bottom of which rivers ran as fast the other way. 

I watched and looked as long as fatigue allowed, but 
fell asleep in the uncomfortable kuruma, waked every now 
and then by some sudden jolt to my extended arm and 
head. 

Occasionally I had dreamy glances at what I remem- 
ber as a vast plain, with lofty, colorless mountains at one 
side, and perhaps I saw ghmpses of the sea. The night 
air was cool in the hollows after the sweltering day, and 
I/ound my arm and face damp with the dew. A Japan- 
ese poet would have said that it was but the spray from 
off the oars of some heavenly boat which sailed that night 
across the starry stream of the Milky Way. 

In the dawn we saw the white walls of the castle of the 
city of Osaka, and ran across its many bridges, all silent 
in the morning. 

September 19. 
We spent the late afternoon and early evening in the 
state apartments of the temple of the Green Lotus, where 
we looked at strange dances and listened to curious 
music. 

All was sacred and mystic, according to traditions 
transmitted orally from early ages, and all the more liable 

243 



to disappear as the heredity of occupation which has been 
the mark of Japan is more and more endangered by mo- 
dern views and modern *' openings." 

When we had wandered through those shady apart- 
ments in the long, low buildings of the temple gardens, 
and had seen the paintings of their screen walls, and the 
carvings of their transoms, we sat down in one of the 
largest rooms, the wall screen was removed which di- 
vided us from another, and we had then a ready-made 
stage before us. Light came in from the open veranda, 
now stripped of all screens, against whose platform many 
unbidden, unofficial guests, acquaintances of acquain- 
tances, and people about the temple, leaned in a mass of 
heads and arms and busts. Outside the light was filtered 
green and orange through the trees, and caught the edges 
of all forms in the shade within. The orchestra of flutes 
and drums occupied a little recess, from behind which 
the dancers appeared in turn. Behind the musicians, a 
great violet curtain, with three temple crests in white, 
made a twilight background for their white and blue 
dresses, gilded by the lights in the tall candlesticks on the 
floors before them. With the sound of the instruments 
two boys came around the corner of the screen, and, salut- 
ing, stepped off in short, zigzag movements, evidently 
learned by rote, and which had a certain strange ele- 
gance. They were performing the butterfly dance, and 
made out very distinctly the crisscross flight of the insects. 
When they lighted or poised before lighting their feet 
struck the ground and they swayed without stepping 
away. They wore butterfly wings, and wide sleeves melt- 
ing into them, and their silver diadems, filled up with 
twigs of flowering plants, made out a faint fringe of an- 
tennae. They wore the ugly ancient trousers of yellow 
silk, and long trains of embroidered green satin trailed on 
the mats behind them. Broad bands of blue and white 

244 



across the chest, and a white belt, recalled the insect orig- 
inal, and blue and white wings drooped over their wide 
green satin garments. Each carried a flowering branch 
in his hand. It was all more strange than beautiful, 
with a mysterious impression of remote antiquity, as 
if invented for some prehistoric Polynesian worship. In 
some of the next dances, whose names I do not remem- 
ber, and which were carried out by men, the flat mask, 
with a wide triangle for eyes and another for the mouth, 
made out just this similitude. In another dance two men 
glided about the room, listening and finding their way ; 
then warriors in antique Chinese costume, with great hel- 
mets and halberds, and coats of mail, and long trains, 
appeared singly and by twos, and marched and counter- 
marched ; and finally, standing by their lances, laid at 
their feet, drew and held up their swords, while each 
other peaceful hand was extended in the gesture that we 
know as the pontifical blessing ; and this ended the danc'e 
of ** Great Peace," probably some relic of early triumphant 
Chinese dynasties. 

It was now evening : the blue light of the open veranda 
made large square openings in the golden room. Out- 
side, against the balustrade, pressed dark forms, with 
faces reddened by the light inside — the outside lookers- 
on. Inside, the gold walls and the gilded ceiling, the 
great gold temple drum, the yellow mats, and the white 
dresses of the musicians, made a soft bloom like the hol- 
low of a lotus, when the last performer, in rose-red and 
crimson, glided into the room, swinging from side to side, 
and brandishing a gilded scepter. Uncouth gestures and 
enormous strides, with no meaning that I could make out, 
a frightful mask that hung far away from the face, with 
loose jaw and projecting mane and a long red, pointed 
hood, made an impression as barbarous, as meaningless, 
as splendid, and as annoying as what we might feel before 
i6* 245 



the painted and gilded idol of some little known and 
cruel creed. This was the dance of '' Ra Dragon King," 
and closed the entertainment. 

We exchanged some words with the late performers in 
their insignificant everyday clothes, and rode home in the 
twilight through the little roads, where Kioto gentlemen 
were rushing their horses up and down, wrapped in wide 
riding trousers, which fluttered along the horses' flanks. . . . 

We have also given a soiree, — that is to say, a supper, 
with the proper trimmings of musical entertainment and 
dancing, and were probably the most amused of all the 
people there. The amusement consisted, in great meas- 
ure, of our not knowing just what we were going to have, 
for otherwise the details were simple to monotony. We 
had one of the upper floors of a fashionable inn. It was 
very hot, and we were glad to find that we should be at 
supper in our loosest bath robes. There was nothing un- 
usual — though everything is novel to us — but the ex- 
treme smallness of the \x\2.ny geishas, who sat between us 
at the end of the dinner, passed the sake, said witty things, 
of which we understood not one word, gave us much music 
on the samisen (the three-stringed guitar) and on the 
flute, and sang, and gave us dances. But they were ab- 
solutely incredible in the way of littleness. It did not 
seem possible that there were real bones inside their nar- 
row little wrists and dolls' fingers. What there was in 
most of their little heads I don't know, but I could 
have imagined sawdust. For the doll illusion, for the 
painted face and neck and lips, all done upon the same 
pattern from pure conventionality (not at all like our 
suggestive painting), and the sudden stopping sharply 
at a line on the little slender neck, gave me the feeling 
of their having artificial heads. The gentle little bodies 
disappeared entirely inside of the folds of the dress 

246 




A PILGRIM. 



and the enormous bows of the sash. And when the tall 
youngsters, Americans, whom we had invited, began to 
romp with the playthings, late in the evening, I felt 
anxious about possible breakage, such as I remember, 
in nursery days, when we boys laid hold of our sisters' 
dolls. 

But this artificial impression disappears as with all 
novelty in people, and when one of the youngest of 
these child-women, at some moment in the evening, re- 
moved the mask of the jolly fat woman (that you know 
by the prints), behind which she had been singing, the 
little sad face told its contradictory story as touchingly as 
with any of her Aryan sisters. And late in the evening, 
when the fun, I suppose, was uproarious, we went to the 
extreme of writing and painting on fans, and one of our 
merchant guests wasted India-ink in mock tattooing of 
his bared arm and shoulder. 

September 21. 

We leave to-morrow morning. 

This has been Sunday, our last day in Kioto. I have 
been trundled all day in a fearful rain, to see last sights, 
to look up shops for the last time. My runners have 
taken me to this or that place, near the great temples, 
where I hope finally to decide upon some little Buddha 
or Amida, which have tempted me among other sculp- 
tures, and I have dallied in the other shops that supply 
the small things that adhere to worship, and finally I have 
made a long visit to the good lady who has sold me pot- 
tery, and who once shocked my Western prudery by dilat- 
ing upon the merits of unmentionable designs and inde- 
scribable bric-a-brac. 

At length I return in the gray noon, giving a last look 
at each shop that I know ; at the long fa9ade of the '* Inn 
of Great Wealth," at the signs and the flags of the theater ; 
at the little geishas trotting about in couples, whom I re- 

249 



cognize (for how can I tell them from those whom I 
know ?) ; at the quaint, amusing little children, always a 
fresh delight ; at the little pavilion near us, where the 
archers shoot ; at the places where horses stand under the 
trees to be ridden by amateurs ; at the small tea garden's 
pretty gates ; at the latticed windows which open in the 
dusk ; and then, with their coats sticking to their backs, 
and wet, stained legs, my runners leave me at the gate of 
the hotel ; final settlement of purchases in boxes, packing, 
and receiving visits of departure. 

In the late afternoon we go to the temples on the edge 
of the hill near us (the temples of Kiyomidzu) with two 
of our good friends and their children. Our runners in- 
sist upon dragging and bumping us up many steps, and 
finally escort us, almost to the temple itself, in a proces- 
sion of double file, which, like a long tail, halts when we 
stop, and again waggles after us in uncertainty when we 
set off anew. We walk along the ascending street and 
stop to bargain at the innumerable little shops, full of little 
odds and ends, half playthings and half religious emblems 
or images, which are sold certainly to the pleasure of the 
many children who throng the place. And I, too, feel 
pleased at having children with us, and at having occasion- 
ally the timid little fingers of Miss Kimi in mine. In her 
other small hand she holds a fan that I painted yester- 
day for her father, and I wonder occasionally whether she 
wishes me to notice her possession. I surmise that the 
foreign gentleman gives her sometimes a little doubtful 
fear, as I catch her eyes looking up cautiously from be- 
low her ''bangs." We talk, exactly of what it would be 
hard to say, for there is not with us enough of any one 
language "to go round," and our interpreter has been 
left out; but we feel distinctly that we understand each 
other, and our older companions explain quite a number 
of things in this partnership of a few words. 

250 



We ascend the high steps on one side of the tower and 
pass with the Sunday crowd through the great hall, like 
a corridor, along which are seated on altar steps golden 
images of gods, in a shadow dusted by the long beams of 
the afternoon sun, that pour across it from one open side. 
Through this veil of dancing motes we see the statues and 
the great gilded lotuses and candelabra, and ,the forms of 
attendant priests, and the crowd that passes, and that 
stops for a moment in prayer. The words that they re- 
peat come into cadence with the shuffling of their feet, 
and the creaking of the planks of the flooring, and the 
sounds of the dropping of offerings. 

The crowd is quiet, orderly, but amused at being out. 
The women smile out of their slanting eyes and walk 
leaning forwards, and their black hair shines like lacquer, 
and the artificial flowers in the great folds of the coiffure 
dance in the sunlight. They are quietly dressed, all but 
the young girls, who wear bright colors and blue satin 
sashes. The men slide about, also in quiet silk or cotton. 
A large part of them are dressed in every shade of blue ; 
occasionally the bare leg comes out, but all wear holiday 
dress, except our runners or their fellows, who keep 
their workday looks. And the children — they are all 
everywhere, and all at home ; they are all dressed up, 
with full, many-colored skirts, and showy sashes, and 
every little head with some new and unexplainable spot 
of tonsure. 

Many of the crowd turn around the building, or its 
veranda, touching the columns with their hands and 
following tracks, worn deep like ruts, in the planking of 
enormous thickness. Oye-San points this out to me, 
and indicates its religious intention. Both he and our 
other companion clap their hands and pray for a moment. 
A wave of seriousness and abstraction passes over their 
faces ; then again all is as before, and we step out upon 

251 



the wide balcony, which, built upon gigantic piles, hangs 
over a deep hollow filled with trees and buildings, all in 
the shadow now. From below rise, with the coolness of 
the green trees and grass, the sounds of dropping waters. 
In time we descend the path and the steps, and drink 
from one of the streams which fall from gigantic gar- 
goyles, out of a great mass of wall. 

But it is late : we look again upon Kioto from the 
temple above, all swimming in light and haze, and walk 
back to our kurumas ; a final good-by to the children, 
but we shall see their parents again ; and then we return, 
and look from our veranda for the last time at the city 
stretched out in the evening, lost almost entirely in the 
twilight of a great lake of violet fog. A few shapes are 
just felt in the misty space, but no more than as waves 
in water, or as greater densities in the undulations of 
the colored vapor. So uncertain is everything that the 
nearest temple building loses its place, and floats all be- 
low its roof; but its wet tiles glitter, reflecting the rose- 
colored drift in the highest pale turquoise sky. 

Below us, the trees make a delicate pattern of dark, 
wet lace. 

Then the rose-color deepens and dulls, the upper sky 
becomes colorless; all floats in unreal space, and Kioto 
disappears from before my eyes : forever, I suppose — as 
the charm of this scene, which will never come again; 
as the little maiden whom I met to-day, only for an 
eternal good-by. 



252 



A JAPANESE DAY.— FROM KIOTO TO GIFU 

Nagoya, September. 

^ TOT WITHSTANDING the long parting, which kept 
\ us up very late, the same courteous Japanese friends 
were at the hotel in the morning to bid us a still more 
final good-by. Oye-San alone remained faithful to his 
self-intrusted care of us, and determined to see us as far 
as the land would allow, — that is to say, to the shores of 
Biwa Lake. 

The caravan was smaller now, diminished by our part- 
ing with Awoki, the interpreter, and the men necessary to 
trundle him about. Still we were a goodly company, — 
nineteen men in all, of whom two were masters, one the 
servant, and the rest the runners who were to get us and 
our baggage to Otzu on Biwa Lake long before noon. 
There was to be no novelty on our road, it being merely 
the highway from the capital to the lake. It was a lovely 
morning, the sun long risen, and all the places and build- 
ings now a part of our memories glistening in the shadow 
and the dew. We turned our backs for the last time on 
Kiyomidzu, and ran through the great gate of the temple 
near us; then, bumping down the steep steps under it, 
skirted the great wall of Dai Butzu and the interminable 
side of the Sanjiu sangendo (the hall of the thirty- three 
spaces),-^ along which in old times the archers used to shoot. 
Then we gradually got out of the city, into the road filled 
with traffic going both ways. There seemed to be no break 
between town and country. Here and there the moun- 

1 Three hundred and eighty-nine feet long. 
253 



tain side, covered with trees, descended to the road. But 
the effect was that of a long street, deep among hills, and 
continuously spotted with buildings. Long trains of beau- 
tiful black bulls, drawing lumber or merchandise, or carry- 
ing straw-covered bales, streamed peacefully along. We 
passed peasant women, — hardy, tall, sometimes handsome, 
with scarlet undergowns held up ; occasionally one riding 
on a pack-horse, or in her place a child perched on the 
hump of the wooden saddle. Or, again, peasants bearing 
loads on their backs, or carriers with weighty merchan- 
dise swung between them on poles ; priests, young and 
old, stepping gravely in their white, or yellow, or black 
dresses — some with umbrellas open, others, whose quicker 
step meant that they had not far to go (perhaps only to 
some wayside temple), protecting their shaven heads with 
outspread fan. Or a kuruma, usually with one runner, 
taking into town, economically, two women together, one 
old, one young, and followed by another kuruma carrying 
some old gentleman, very thin or very fat, the head of a 
family. Kurumas carrying Japanese tourists or travelers, 
with hideous billycock hats, or Anglo-Indian helmets, or 
wide straw hats a la mode de Third Avenue, these abom- 
inable head-pieces contrasting with their graceful gowns, 
as did their luggage, wrapped up in silk handkerchiefs 
with their European travehng rugs. Or, again, other ku- 
rumas carrying unprotected females in pairs, with the 
usual indifferent or forlorn look; or couples of young girls 
more gaily dressed, with flowery hairpins, the one evi- 
dently a chaperon to the other; then a Government offi- 
cial, all European, with hurrying runners ; sometimes, 
but rarely, the Japanese litter, or kago, or several if for a 
party, their occupants lying at their ease as to their backs, 
but twisted into knots as to their feet, and swaying with 
the movement of the trotting carriers. Bent to one side 
by the heavy ridgepole, which passes too low to allow the 

254 



head to lie in the axis of the body, sweet-eyed women's 
faces, tea-rose or peach-colored, looked up from the bam- 
boo basket of the Htter. With proper indifference their 
lords and masters looked at us obliquely. On the roofs 
was spread a miscellaneous quantity of luggage. 

From time to time troopers or officers, of course in 
European costume, mounted on Japanese chargers, can- 
tered past. Two hours of this ; then the sides of the 
road, which had risen and fallen with hill and valley, 
melted away, and the harbor of Otzu and Lake Biwa 
and blue mountains over the water, and others sketched 
in the air, were spread before us in the blaze of sunlight 
seen through the cool shadow of the mountains. 

We rode down the hill to a little jetty, marvelously 
like a North River dock, with big sheds where passengers 
were waiting, and a little steamer fastened to the wharf 
We bade good-by for the last time to Oye-San, who 
said many things that we appreciated but did not under- 
stand the words of, and who pointed to the square Japan- 
ese sails glittering in the far-off light, saying, " Fune, 
Fune ! " (''The boats, the boats ! ") We dismissed kurumas 
and kurumaya and sailed off with Hakodate (the courier) 
alone. We stretched ourselves on the upper deck, half 
in sun, half in shadow, and blinked lazily at the distant 
blue mountains and the great sea-like lake. 

Two hours later we had landed at a long jetty, in a 
heavy sea, with tossing dark blue water, different from 
the quiet azure of our sail. The brisk wind, blowing the 
white clouds over the blue sky, was clear and cold. We 
got out of its reach, as I felt neuralgic, and tried to sleep 
in a little tea-house, waking to the screams of the tea- 
house girl, *'Mairimasho!" and I had but time to get into 
the train. Whether it started from there or had arrived 
there, I never knew. I had been glad to forget everything 
in dreamland. 

255 



I remember little of my railroad ride, what with neural- 
gia and heat, and the effects of the dance of the little 
steamer on Lake Biwa. There were mountains and ra- 
vines, and vast engineering protections for our path, and 
everywhere the evidence of a struggle with the many 
running waters we crossed or skirted. The blue and sil- 
ver of the lake that we had crossed, and the sweetness 
of its air, were shut out in the dust and the heat of moun- 
tain sides. We had not seen the Eight Beauties of Biwa 
Lake.^ The "Autumn Moon from Ishiyama " had set 
long before we passed, and the idea of other temples to 
be seen brought out A 's antagonism to more climb- 
ing, only to be rewarded by promenades through lanterns 
and shrines and confused struggling with dates and divin- 
ities. " The Evening Snow on Hira-yama " was not to 
fall until we should be across the Pacific ; nor could we 
ask of that blue September morning '* The Blaze of Eve- 
ning at Seta" nor "The Evening Bell of Mii-dera" — 
though we heard the bell early, and wondered whether 
it were still uninjured, from the time when big Benkei 
carried it off and exchanged it for too much soup, exactly 
seven hundred years ago ; nor " Rain by Night at Kara- 
saki," the place of the famous pine-tree, which was grow- 
ing, they say, twenty-four hundred years ago, when Jim- 
mu was emperor. There I might have met, perhaps, the 
" Old Man and the Old Woman " you have seen over 
and over again in the pictures and on the fans. (They 
are the spirits of the other old pine-trees of Takasago 
and Sumiyoshi, and they are fond of visiting each other.) 
Nor did we see "The Wild Geese aHghting at Katada," 
but I felt as if I had seen " The Boats sailing back from 
Yabase" and "The Bright Sky with a Breeze at Awadzu." 
If I had not, I still had seen boats saiHng over and un- 
der as lovely a blue as can be spread by early September 

1 Omi-no-hakkei. 
256 



days. I suppose that our friend Oye-San was trying to 
recall these last classical quotations to me when he bade 
me good-by at the landing in Otzu. An ocean rolls be- 
tween his Parnassus and ours, but he lives much nearer 
to the mood that once made beautiful the names of Tempe^ 1 
and Helicon and the winding Meander. ^ 

With all this dreaming I fell asleep, and woke free 
from pain, but stupid and unimpressionable, as our train 
stopped at the little station from which we were to ride 
to Gifu. This was a little, new way-station (of course I 
don't remember its name), so like, and so unlike, one of 




FUSI-YAMA FROM KAMBARA BEACH. 



ours, with the same look of the railroad being laid down 
— '' imposed " — on an earth which did not understand 
what it all meant — grass struggling to get back to 
the sides of filled-up ditches ; timbers lying about ; new, 
astonished buildings, in one of which we washed, and 
waited, and dined. Meanwhile Hakodate went after the 
runners who were to drag us on our afternoon ride, and 
then, if "we suited," to run with us the whole week, thirty- 
five miles a day, along the Tokaido, back toward Yoko- 
hama. 

When all was ready it was late afternoon, and our pro- 
17 257 



cession ran along what seemed to be a vast plain of table- 
land, with high mountains for an edge. All seemed as 
clear and neat as the air we rode in. Somewhere there 
we must have passed the hill of *' The Turning Back of 
the Chariot" : this means that, long ago, — that is to say, 
about 1470, — the regent Yoshimoto, while traveHng here, 
found that the inhabitants, to do him honor, had put in 
order, neat and trim, the thatch of every building. What 
the prince was looking for is what we call the picturesque. 
To miss all the charms that ruin brings was too much 
for his esthetic soul, and he ordered the wheels of his char- 
iot to be turned for home. So did not we. Neater and 
neater grew the inclosures, farms, and villages ; the fences 
had pretty gates, — curious patterns of bamboo pickets, 
— a far-away, out- of- the -world flavor of Holland or 
Flanders. Even the ordinary setting out of wayside trees, 
in this province of forestry, insisted on the analogy, con- 
fused perhaps with a dream of Lombard plains and moun- 
tains in a cool blue distance, for the mind insists on 
clinging to reminiscences, as if afraid to trust itself to 
the full sea of new impressions. 

As I rode along, so neat and clean was each picture, 
framed in sunlight if we were in shadow, or in clear shade 
when we were in sunHght, that I thought I could remem- 
ber enough small facts for sketches and notes when I 
should get to Gifu. We reached Gifu in the early twi- 
light, and had no special one impression ; we were framed 
in by the streets, and confused by turning corners, and 
disturbed by anxiety to get in. But we had one great 
triumph. Our guide was new to the place — as we were; 
and we chose our inn at our own sweet will, with a 
feeling of authority and personal responsibiUty deHcious 
to experience after such ignominy of guidance. Up we 
went to our rooms, and opening the shojis^ looked out 

1 Sliding screens, which take the place of our windows. 
258 



upon the river, which seemed broad as a great lake. 
Our house was right upon it, and the open casement 
framed nothing but water and pointed mountains, steal- 
ing away in the obscure clearness of a colorless twilight. 
The running of the river, sloping down from the hills on 
a bed of pebbles, cut off the noises of the town, if there 
were any, and the silence was like that of far-away coun- 
try heights. In this semi-painful tension the day's pic- 
tures disappeared from my mind. I was all prepared to 
have something happen, for which I should have been 
listening, when suddenly our host appeared, to say that 
the boats were coming down the river. The chilly eve- 
ning air gave us new freshness, and off we started, deaf 
to the remonstrances of Hakodate, who had prepared and 
set out his very best for supper. We rushed past the 
artist in cookery, whose feelings I could yet appreciate, 
and plunged after our host into the dark streets. In a 
few minutes we were by the riverside, and could see far 
off what we took for our boat, with its roof and lanterns. 
The proffered backs of our lantern-bearing attendants 
gave the solution of how we were to get to it. Strad- 
dling our human nags, we were carried far out into the 
shallow, pebbly river, landed into the boat, and poled 
out into deeper water, nothing to be seen but the night 
and the conical hills, one of Avhich I fancied to be Inaba, 
where was once Nobunaga's castle. Some faint mists 
, were white in the distance, as if lighted by a rising moon. 
At no great distance from us, perhaps at a quarter of a 
mile, a light flickered over the water. On our approach 
we could distinguish a man connected with it, who ap- 
parently walked on the dark surface. He was evidently 
a fisherman or a shrimper, and his movements had all 
the strangeness of some long-legged aquatic bird. He 
knew his path, and, far out, followed some track or ford, 
adding to the loneliness as does a crane in a marshy 

259 



landscape. Then I saw him no more, for he headed up 
the river toward an opening between the hills. Sud- 
denly a haze of light rounded the corner of the nearest 
mountain, then grew into a line of fire coming toward 
us. Above the rustle of the river's course, and our own 
against it, came the beating of a cry in unison. The line 
of flame broke into many fires, and we could see the 
boats rushing down upon us. As quickly as Lean write 
it, they came in an even Hne, wide apart — perhaps fifty 
feet or so — enough for us to pass between, whereupon 
we reversed our movement and drifted along with them. 
In the front of each boat, hung upon a bent pole, blazed 
a large cresset filled with pine knots, making above a 
cloud of smoke, starred with sparks and long needles of 
red cinders. Below, in the circle of each light, and on its 
outer rim, swam many birds, glossy black and white cor- 
morants, straining so at the cords that held them that 
they appeared to be dragging the boats. As they spread 
like a fan before the dark shadow of the bows, the cords 
which fastened them glistened or were black in the night. 
Each string ran through the fingers of the master-fisher 
at the bows, and was fastened to his waist and lost in the 
gHttering straw of his rain-skirt. Like a four-in-hand 
driver, he seemed to feel his birds' movements. His fin- 
gers loosened or tightened, or, as suddenly, with a clutch 
pulled back. Then came a rebellious fluttering, and the 
white glitter of fish in the beaks disappeared — unavail- 
ingly ; each bird was forcibly drawn up to the gunwale, 
and seized by the neck encircled by its string-bearing 
collar. Then a squeeze — a white fish glittered out again 
and was thrown back into the boat. The bird scuttled 
away, dropped back into the water, and, shaking itself, 
was at work again. They swam with necks erect, their 
eyes apparently looking over everything, and so indiffer- 
ent to small matters as to allow the big cinders to lie un- 

260 



noticed on their oily, flat heads. But, every few seconds, 
one would stoop down, then throw back its head wildly 
with a fish crosswise in its mouth. When that fish was a 
small one it was allowed by the master of the bird to 
remain in the capacious gullet. Each pack guided by a 
master varied in numbers, but I counted thirteen fastened 
to the waist of the fisherman nearest to us. , Behind him 
stood another poling: then farther back an apprentice, 
with a single bird, was learning to manage his fea- 
thered tools. In the stern stood the steersman, using a 
long pole. Every man shouted, as huntsmen encourag- 
ing a pack, '' Hoo ! Hoo ! Hoo ! " — making the cry 
whose rhythm we had heard when the flotilla bore down 
upon us. 

Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, more passed as we 
kept alongside with motionless celerity. I tried to sketch 
in the insuflicient light — making sometimes one sketch 
right upon another, so little could I see my lines in the 
treacherous light. Then the boats swerved ofl" and were 
driven to the shore together, or as far as we could get to 
it, in the shallow water. Above us rose the steep green 
hillside, the trees and rocks lit up in an arabesque of light 
and dark by the now diminished flames. 

The birds rested, standing in the water, preening their 
oily backs and white bellies, and flapping their ragged 
wings, which seemed to have been clipped. The ap- 
prentice caressed his bird, the fishermen and the steerers 
laughed and exchanged jokes and chatted generally, with 
all the good nature and making light of hard work which 
is so essentially Japanese. 

Then the birds began to fight, and to show that peace 
was not their pleasure. Fresh pine knots were thrown 
into the cressets ; each man took his place ; the polers 
pushed off"; the birds strained at the strings ; and all da 
capo. A little longer we watched, and then we let the 

263 



boats glide past us ; the fires faded again into a haze of 
light as they went down the river toward the bridges of 
the town, now dotted with people. 

Then we were carried to the. shore as we had left it, 
and were piloted home through the streets, now filled 
with lanterns and movement. We found our outraged 
artist in cookery still indignant over our neglect of food, 
but he was gradually appeased, and made up for his 
hungry masters a fairly sufficient meal. Cigars, a scru- 
tiny of my despairing sketches, and a long look at the 
lovely melancholy of the river and mountains before we 
closed the shojis for the night. 



264 



FROM KAMBARA TO MIYANOSHITA — A 
LETTER FROM A KAGO 

September 28. 

I AM writing in a kago} You do not know what an 
achievement this is, but I shall explain later on what 
a kago is, why I am in it, and why it is not exactly the 
place to expect a letter from. To begin at the beginning, 
we were yesterday afternoon at Kambara, on the gulf of 
Suruga Bay. We had eaten there in an inn by the water, 
while I watched through the screens the waving of a palm 
tree in the wind, which was now blowing autumnally and 
had cleared the sky and enhvened us with a hope of con- 
tinuous view of Fuji. Along the beach, as we rode away, 
the breakers ran far up the sand, and the water was green 
as emerald from the brown, wet shore to the distant blue 
haze of the ocean in the south. At the end of the great 
curve of the gulf stretched the Hnes of green and purple 
mountains, which run far off into Idzu, and above them 
stood Fuji in the sky, very pale and clear, with one enor- 
mous band of cloud half-way up its long slope, and melt- 
ing into infinite distance toward the ocean. Its nearest 
point hung half across the mountain's base, more solid 
than the mountain itself, and cast a long shadow upon it 
for miles of distance. Above, the eye could but just de- 
tect a faint haze in the delicate blue of the sky. Best of 
all weather, we thought; a breeder of bad weather, accord- 
ing to our men, who, alas! knew more of it than we did. 
For a mile now, perhaps, we ran along between the sea 
and the abrupt green wall of hills, so steep that we could 

1 You may pronounce kang'go. 
265 



not see them, and, turning sharply around a corner, be- 
held Fuji, now filling the entire field of sight, seeming to 
rise even from below us into the upper sky, and framed at 
its base by near green mountains ; these opened as a gate, 
and showed the glittering streak of the swollen Fujikawa, 
the swiftest river in Japan. 

The lower eastern slope was cut off by clouds, but its 
western line, ineffably delicate in clearness, stretched to 
the left out of our range of vision. Below its violet edge 
the golden slope spread in the sun, of the color of an 
autumn leaf Along the center of this province of space 
the shadow of the great cloud rested. The marks of the 
spurs of the mountain were as faint as the streaks of the 
wind on a grain-field. Its cone was of a deep violet color, 
and as free of snow as though this had been the day of 
poetic tradition upon which the snow entirely disappears 
to fall again the following night. No words can recall 
adequately the simple splendor of the divine mountain. 

As A remarked, it was worth coming to far Japan 

for this single day. 

Right into this marvelous picture we rode, through 
green plantations and rice-fields, which edged the bases 
of the nearest hills and lay between us and the river. 
There we found no means of crossing. All bridges had 
been carried away by the flood. The plain was inundated ; 
travelers had been detained for a week by a sea of waters, 
and were scattered there and in neighboring villages, fill- 
ing every resting-place ; and, worst of all, the police of- 
ficials would not allow us to tempt the fishermen to make 
the dangerous crossing. 

The occasion was a solemn one. The police represen- 
tative, upon seeing us come in person to request help, 
slipped off the easy Japanese dress which he was wear- 
ing in these days of forced idleness, and reappeared from 
behind the screen clad in his official European costume. 

266 



I have no doubt that our interpreter explained to him Avhat 
important persons we were, and what important letters 
we bore to important people of the land, for he kindly 
suggested that we might sail past the mouth of the river, 
from near Kambara, whence we had just come, so as to 
land far away from the spread of all this devastation ; and 
he offered to send a deputy with a requisition for a junk 
and sufficient sailors from the nearest fishing-village on 
the bay — and so we returned. While Hakodate and the 

messenger went on to make all arrangements, A and 

myself stopped at the place where we had had our view 
of Fuji, to make a more careful sketch. You can have no 
idea of how much closer the clearer mind worked out the 
true outline of the mountain, which my excitement had 
heightened at least a couple of thousand feet ; nor should 
I forget how my two-legged horse of a runner held my 
paint-box for me, and seemed to know exactly when and 
where I wished to dip my brush. It seemed to me that only 
a few moments had passed when the messenger returned to 
say that the boat was ready to launch, and that we must 
hurry to be out at sea before sunset ; this too in view of 
the storm, which we might escape if we hurried. The 
implied threat made no impression on me. The picture 
before us had not changed any more than if painted by 
man. The great cloud hung fixed, apparently, in the 
same place. All was still : perhaps in the uppermost 
sky one could distinguish some outlines of white in the 
blue. Still we hurried off, and arrived upon a scene of 
confusion and wild excitement. A captain and a crew 
had been found; their boat stood high up on the crest 
of the surf, now beating on the shore, and carried the 
line with which to pull out the small junk, still far up on 
the beach. The wheels of our kurumas had been taken 
off and their bodies had been placed in the hold. 

As we got on board at least a hundred naked men 

269 



pushed and tugged to start the junk upon the slope of 
sand. The sun was setting suddenly behind the head- 
land of Shizuoka, and the air was filled with the moisture 
from the sea ; a rosy bloom, pink as the clouds them- 
selves, filled the entire air, near and far, toward the light. 
On the other side the distance was fading into gray and 
violet mist. The great mountain was still a great clear 
mass, but colorless, like the northern sky behind it, while, 
bathed in the color of fairyland, we rose and fell over the 
breakers — the spray, the waves, the boat, the bodies of 
the men, ghstening and suffused with pink. 

No painter ever saw a more ideal light. And sud- 
denly it faded, leaving us in a still brilliant twilight, 
through which we looked at the tossing of the hazy sea. 
The mast was lifted and set, the great square sail was 
hoisted, and the captain took hold of the ponderous tiller. 
We stretched ourselves on the poop deck, prepared for a 
dance of seventeen miles ; then under my protecting 
blanket I fell asleep — to wake and see before me a sheet 
of rain. The predicted storm had flooded us ; we lay in 
the water that covered the deck, our waterproofs insuffi- 
cient, and glad to be able to find some protection under the 
Japanese rain-coats of straw, whose merits I had not yet 
understood. 

From under my shelter I could see that our mast was 
lowered, and that the captain and the sailors forward were 
working at the heavy sweeps. Below, under hatches, I 
could hear the groaning of our seasick runners. Between 
the gusts of rain came the voice of the captain, now in the 
straining agony of seasickness, next keeping up a steady, 
chanted talk with a mate forward. A lantern was lashed 
to the post of the tiller, and the captain's bare feet rose 
and fell with his steps at the great oar, showing sharply 
the action of tendons and muscles. I tried to sketch un- 
der my cover, then dozed, — sleepy with the rocking and 

270 



the cold and the wet, — and with every waking hearing 
the whistling of the wind and the continuous monotonous 
voice in a language not understood. So passed the night. 

We saw the morning break on a lonely, high, gray 
bank, streaked by the sea lines of different tides, and 
crowned with a hne of pines of all sizes and shapes, stretch- 
ing for miles dark green against the white clouds which 
covered the base of the mountains behind. Out of these 
white banks stood dull blue peaks, while the highest 
mountains were lost in cloud, and all was gray and deso- 
late with the rain. The surf broke on the sand not more 
than a hundred yards from us. We lay there some time, 
waiting for more Hght, for all wind had ceased ; then four 
men swam ashore with a rope, and towed us along the 
bank. The surf had abated, but landing was too difficult, 
and we were to be dragged, while our other men worked 
at the big sculls and pushed us along. We wore along 
four miles to a little bar, over which we were pulled by 
the men now in the water into a singular Httle harbor 
with an entrance not more than a hundred feet wide. 
On this the surf broke gently — white on the gray sea. 
To our left the backs of two sand- spits dotted the water, 
and on the right, looking out to sea, rose the edge of a 
grove of pines, with four or five houses, heavy roofed and 
thatched, against its green darkness. 

On the curve of the beach before it stood a high pointed 
rock almost touched by the water, edged around and 
covered with pines — all but the perpendicular side facing 
the harbor. On its summit stood a little red temple, whose 
back we saw. On the other side, landwards, as we left 
our boat and followed our guides ashore around its 
base, a hundred steps ran straight up to the front of the 
little shrine — so steep and sudden that we could just 
look along their edge. From the high rock, recessed, ran 
back the shore, on which stood in a row three large junks 

271 



with their sterns to the sea — behind them trees and 
houses. On the opposite side of the little harbor four of 
our men, up to their middle or up to their armpits in 
water, slowly dragged our junk nearer to the shore. All 
was quiet and gray — the men reflected in the moving 
water, the boat creaking along slowly. As I went up 
the beach, following our guide and the boatmen, I thought 
how like this was to the Homeric haven — the grove look- 
ing out to sea and frequented by " fowls maritimal " ; the 
sacred rock; the meadows and the little stream; the long 
galleys drawn up on the beach. The little houses of the 
fishing-village were surrounded by gardens, and their 
walls largely made of plaited bamboo. There was no 
inn, but we found a house half shop, and were welcomed 
to some tea and to a room which the family hastened to 
abandon for us. There were only two rooms besides the 
entrance, which was a large passage floored with earth, 
and along one side of it a raised surface, from which 
began the level of our flooring. 

Sliding partitions, hurriedly run up, made us a room, 
but the outside screens were full of holes, through which, 
in a few minutes, peered all the women and children 
of the village, who occasionally even pushed aside the 
screens to see more completely. The little passage in 
front of our open room was filled with girls and children 
intent upon our ways of smoking, of taking tea, and of 
eating — for we had biscuits with us, and fifteen hours 
at least without food had made us fairly hungry. Mean- 
while the men landed their wagons and the trunks, and 
took their meal of rice, hastily made up, on the ledge 
of the platform on which we sat. This they did in a row, 
the whole twenty eating quietly but rapidly, — I was go- 
ing to say firmly, — shoving into their mouths the rice 
from the bowls, and tearing with their fingers the fish just 
cooked. Meanwhile, among all the ugHness around us 

272 



in women, shone out, with beautiful complexions, — lost 
in the others by exposure to wind and sun, by hard work, 
and probably by child-bearing, — three girls, who stood 
before us a long time, with sweet faces and bright eyes 
and teeth. They stared hard at us until stared at in re- 
turn, when they dispersed, to watch us again like children 
from the doors and from the kitchen. 

Our hostess, small, fat, good-natured, and polite, show- 
ing black-lacquered teeth between rosy lips, Hke ripe 
seeds in a watermelon, bustled about hurrying everything, 
and at the end of our meal our host appeared — from 
the kitchen apparently — and knelt before us. Poor and 
ragged as the house was, with ceilings black with age and 
smoke, and screens torn and worn by rubbing, the little 
tokoiionia held a fairly good picture, and a pretty vase 
with flowers below it. But it was evidently one of the 
poorest of places, and had never seen a foreigner in it. 
This may have been the cause of the appearance of the 
ubiquitous Japanese poHceman within five minutes of our 
arrival. He alone betrayed no curiosity, and disappeared 
with dignity on getting our credentials. 

The rain still held off. We entered our kurumas, now 
ready, and hastened to the main road which we were to 
find at Numadsu, if that be the name of the place. But, 
alas! the rain came down, and my views were confined 
within the outline of an umbrella. My only adventure 
was stopping at some hovel on the road to buy some more 
of that heavy yellow oiled paper which replaces the 
leather apron that we usually find attached to our Euro- 
pean carriages. By and by I consented to have the hood 
of my wagon put up, through which I could see little 
more than the thatched backs of my runners, their bowls 
of hats, ofi" which the rain spattered upon their straw 
cloaks and aprons, and their wet brown legs, lifted with 
the regularity of automatons. It was getting cold, too, 
i8 273 



and women under their umbrellas wore the graceful short 
overcoat they call haori, and tottered over the wet ground 
on high wooden pattens. 

This I noticed as we came into Mishima, from which 
place we were to begin our ascent up the Hakone Pass. 
On our way, were it to clear, we might see Fuji again — 
at any rate, if it cleared in the least we would enjoy 
the mountains. Meanwhile we shivered at lunch, trying to 
get into corners where the wind would not leak through 
the cracks of the shojis, and beginning to experience the 
discomforts of Japanese inns. And now my bashfulness 
having gradually abandoned me, I could take my hot 
bath, separated from the household by a screen not over 
high, over which the fat servant-girls kindly handed me 
my towels. Excuse these trivial details, but I cannot 
otherwise give you the '' local color," and my journal is 
one of small things. Had I come here in the old days 
when I first fell in love with Japan, I might have met 
with some thrilling experience in an inn. 

I might have had such an experience as our poor friend 
Fauvel met with not far from here. I might have met 
some young sworded men, anxious to maintain their dig- 
nity and ripe for a quarrel with the foreigner. Do you 
remember that he jostled the sword of some youngster 
— "the sword, the soul of the Samurai" — which its owner 
had left upon the floor. The insult would have been im- 
possible to explain away had not some sensible Japanese 
official decided that a man who was so careless with his 
sword as to leave it on the mat, instead of on the reput- 
able sword-rack, had no right to complain of another's 
inadvertence. 

I sometimes wonder which of the courteous persons I 
meet, when age allows the supposition, obeyed these rules 
when they were younger ; which ones now dressed in 
black broadcloth wore the great helmet with branching 

274 




RUNNER IN THE RAIN. 



horns, or strapped the two great swords at their waist. 
And I am lost in respect and bewilderment to think that all 
this wondrous change — as great as any that the world 
can have seen — was effected with such success and ac- 
cepted in such a lofty spirit. 

We were now to give up the kuruma and to travel by the 
kago, which, you will remember, I promised to describe. 
The kago is a curious institution, partly superseded by 
the kuruma, but lingering in many places, and necessary 
where the pack-horse would be unsafe, and where one 
would otherwise have to walk. It consists of a small lit- 
ter hung by stiff bamboos from a great pole, over which is 
steadied a little matted roof, from which various protec- 
tions from rain or sun can be dropped. The kago has its 
discomforts : one lies down in it all doubled up, with legs 
crossed as far as they can be made to, because the basket, 
which is the body of the litter, is only about three feet 
long; and with head to one side, because, if one lifted it, 
it might strike the ridge-pole. The proper way is to lie 
not quite in the axis. This is all the more natural, as 
the men at either end do not carry it in a straight line, 
but at an angle, so that from one side you can see a little 
in front of you. 

Into the kagos we were folded, and in a torrent of rain 
we departed. I resisted my being shut up in my litter by 
the oiled-paper sides that are used in the rain, and I de- 
pended upon mackintosh and blanket to protect me. The 
rain came down in sheets. We trotted uphill, the men 
going on for a few minutes, then changing shoulders, and 
then again another pair taking their turn — four to each 
litter. Meanwhile they sang, as they trotted, something 
which sounded Hke *' Hey, hey, hey, het tue hey." The 
road was almost all paved, and in the steeper ascents was 
very bad. 

And now I began to experience some novel sensations 
18* 277 



not easy to describe. My feet were turned in upon the 
calves of the legs like an Indian Buddha's, and I soon 
began to ache along sciatic lines; then elsewhere, then 
everywhere. Then I determined to break with this ar- 
rangement, as anger seized me ; fortunately a sort of 
paralysis set in, and I became torpid and gradually re- 
signed ; and gradually also I fell asleep with the curious 
motion and the chant of the men, and woke accustomed, 
and so I am writing. 

I can just remember large trees and roads protected by 
them ; some places where we seemed alone in the world, 
where we left trees and stood in some narrow path, just 
able to see above its sides — all else shut out of existence 
by the rain ; and I have all along enjoyed the novel sen- 
sation of moving on the level of the plants and shrubs. 

We are now going downhill again, and can look down 
an avenue of great trees and many steps which we de- 
scend. We are coming to Hakone ; I can see the lake 
beyond a Torii, and at the first corner of the road under 
the trees begins the village. 

MiYANOSHiTA, September 28. 

Again the kago, and the rain as soon as we departed. 
I turned as well as I could, to find the lovely lines, now 
lost in general shapes and values, blurred into masses. 
Once the light opened on the top of some high hill, 
and I could see, with wild roses right against me, some 
flat milestone marked with an image against the edges 
of distant mountains, and a sky of faint twilight pink ; or 
again we pattered along in wet grass, past a great rock 
with a great bas-relief image — a Jizo (patron of travel- 
ers) sitting in the loneliness with a few flowers before him. 
Then in the rain, and mingling with the mist, thicker 
cloudings marked the steam from hot springs, which make 
these parts of the mountains a resort for invaHds and 
bathers. 

278 



Soon the darkness : then pine knots were lighted and 
we descended among the trees, in a path Hke a torrent, 
the water running along between the stones, which the feet 
of the bearers seemed to find instinctively. The arms of 
the torch-bearers were modeled in wild lights and shad- 
ows ; the hats of the men made a dusky halo around their 
heads ; the rain-coats of straw glistened wjth wet ; occa- 
sionally some branch came out, distinct in every leaf, be- 
tween the smoke and the big sparks and embers. The 
noise of torrents near by rose above the rain and the 
patter and the song of the men. The steepness of the 
path seemed only to increase the rapidity of our runners, 
who bounded along from stone to stone. After a time 
anxiety was lost in the excitement of the thing and in 
our success, but quite late in our course I heard behind 

me a commotion — one of A 's runners had slipped 

and the kago had come down ; no one hurt — the kago 
keeps its occupant packed too tightly. Then the path left 
the wild descent; we trotted through regular, muddy roads, 
stopped once on disbanding our torch-bearers, and reached 
the Europeanized hotel at Miyanoshita, where I intend to 
sleep to-night on a European bed, with a bureau and a 
looking-glass in my room. One little touch not quite 
like ours, as a gentle lady of uncertain age offers me her 
services for the relief of fatigue by massage, before I de- 
scend to drink Bass's ale in the dining-room, alongside of 
Britons from the neighboring Yokohama, only one day's 
journey farther. 



279 



POSTSCRIPT 

[This much of my letters, or all but a few pages, has 
been published at intervals in "The Century Magazine." 
I had hoped for time to add some further notes on Jap- 
anese art, and some fragments of my journal, but neither 
time nor health allows me more. I should have preferred 
also to replace some of the drawings and photographs 
here engraved by some pages from note-books nearer to 
the feeling of the text — something more serious and less 
finished than suits a magazine. 

With some regret I let these matters stand ; with less 
regret because my notes are merely impressions of a 
given date. Since then Loti has written, and Mr. Laf- 
cadio Hearn has written and writes with his usual charm. 
Mr. Lowell has opened singular pages, Mr. Chamberlain's 
authority has been given to popular information; Mrs. 
Coates has written in laughter; Miss Scidmore has adorned 
the guide-book, Mr. Parsons, Mr. East . . . the list is too 
long. 

I must thank Mr. H. Shugio for the ''grass characters" 
of his elegant translation of my preface ; and Mr. M. 
Tsuchiya for much information.] 



280 



APPENDIX 

I give as an appendix the " Suruga Gobunsho," the 
letter o( lyeyasu to his daughter-in-law, in which he 
defines the position of lyemitsii's brother. I have it at 
two removes from the original, so that, as a Japanese 
acquaintance remarks, ''Recollecting the shadow of the 
original hanging in a corner of my memory, I hardly 
recognize the energetic style of the ' old badger ' — Furu 
Danuki — as lyeyasu was called by his antagonists." 
Notwithstanding, I give it with all these defects, there 
being nothing fixed in history but documents ; and this 
document gives us the real mind of a great man, his 
make-beheve appearance, his intimate resemblance to 
other great managers, and a statement of the correct 
ideas of his time, to which he gave a fixed form. 



LETTER OF lYEYASU 

It is getting warmer daily, and life is again quite pleas- 
ant. How is it with you and your children ? When 
last I had the pleasure of visiting you I was charmed by 
the friendly reception which was given to me, and I beg 
that you will present my thanks therefor to your lord. It 
pleases me much to hear that both my grandchildren — 
Take ^ and Kuni- — have grown. When I w'as with you I 
advised you to select a tutor for Take. Have you already 
done this ? Kuni is really very clever ; which is a thing 

1 The child-name of lyemitsu. 

2 The child-name of the brother of lyemitsu. 

281 



to rejoice In, and you ought to hold him especially dear. 
I have had some experience, and therefore proceed to 
communicate to you my views as to how you can bring 
him up to be a good man. 

If a child, however clever and gifted, be allowed to 
grow up entirely free and without discipHne, it will be- 
come in riper age wilful and positive. Children are 
usually disobedient to their parents. If they are made 
to obey their parents they will yet still less accommodate 
themselves to their surrounding. But will they be able 
as men to rule over States ? Not in the least, since 
they have not been able even to rule themselves. Con- 
sidering how naive is youth, a severe education does not 
seem at first sight to be fitting, but herein man resembles 
a plant. Of a tree, for instance, only a little sprig first 
shows ; with careful attendance little by little the branches 
and leaves are developed ; then a prop is given to the 
same that it may grow straight, and the poor growths 
are cut off. If each year one goes on carefully with this 
treatment one may obtain straight, beautiful trees. With 
man it is just the same. As the child comes to be four 
or five years a prop is given him in the person of a 
good tutor who shall remove the bad growths, shall 
subdue wilfulness, and make a fine man out of him. 
Often this foresight of care is neglected, allowing the 
child to grow up in freedom without protecting him 
against his own self-will. Only when the child can 
already think for itself do the elders begin their admoni- 
tions, but then it is quite too late : the branches of wil- 
fulness are already too far grown, and the stem can no 
longer bring forth new branches. A good tree is no 
longer to be aimed at. 

In this connection I have a lively recollection of 
Saburo.^ When he was born I was still a young man, 

1 Saburo was the eldest son of lyeyasu. 
282 



and I was enchanted by the first child. He was some- 
what weakly, and on that account I thought that he 
should be especially protected and given the greatest 
liberty. I was not severe with him and allowed him all 
that he wished. After he had grown up I often found 
occasion to blame this and that in him, and to give him 
admonition and advice, but I had no success therein, 
because in his youth no one had taken trouble about his 
conduct and speech. He had never learned to treat his 
parents with thoughtfulness, and to respect them as filial 
duty ordered, but behaved toward them as if they were 
his equals, so that finally it had to come to a quarrel, and 
the results are that he hates them now, and is quite es- 
tranged from them. Warned by these evil experiences, 
I undertook other rules for the education of other chil- 
dren. For instance, I chose persons to attend the child 
who themselves had been brought up from youth with 
the greatest severity, and I ordered them to let me know 
at once when the slightest trace of wilfulness or other 
similar defect was discovered. And I called the child to 
me, gave him a rebuke, and extended to him some few 
strong words of advice. Through following this educa- 
tion the child grew to be as faultless as a straight grown 
tree ; knew no self-will, because he considered the will of 
his parents as the highest law. He practised self-control 
and learned continually how one should best honor one's 
parents. 

In the families of princes a child holds another stand- 
ing, and is subjected to other influences than in the 
families of subjects. In provision of this and of the 
future position of the child, his education must be dif- 
ferent in certain points. The parents should always 
oblige the child to follow the admonitions of those placed 
about him, otherwise after their death the child would 
succumb entirely to its own wilfulness, and at the end 

283 



forfeit the throne, as many examples have taught us 
before this. Therefore, it is the duty of the educator to 
implant in his scholar from the earliest youth and before 
everything veneration for his parents, the yielding of the 
will to Providence, gentleness toward subjects, and high- 
mindedness ; only so can he bring him up to be a real 
man. 

A separation between the lord and the subjects is cer- 
tainly necessary for the upholding of social order, and 
is commanded by the circumstances, but the lord must 
also consider that he is the subject of his subjects. My 
tutor, Abe Okura, repeated over and over again the fol- 
lowing precept to me in my youth, and I find it very 
well founded : If in ordinary circumstances the subjects 
yield to their master, even when he is unjust, and follow 
his service even when he acts as a tyrant, yet in extraor- 
dinary emergencies all this may change very easily. 
Therefore, the ruler should behave compassionately to- 
ward his subjects and distribute impartial reward and 
punishment strictly and with justice ; he should see in 
these subjects the foundation of his government, for with- 
out a Servant there can be no Master. In order that 
they may have these truths before their eyes in riper 
age, children should be trained in time to value the opin- 
ions of those about them, and to be guided by them, be- 
cause out of the words and deeds of those who are nearest 
to us we can best judge the worth of our own deeds. A 
wilful man is never contented, for if he yields only to his 
own will he forgets the duty of reverence for his parents, 
and earns in consequence both from them, his relations, 
his friends, and even from his servants, only displeasure 
and depreciation, and finally he is unable to reach what 
he had proposed. As he notices these failures, he comes 
to hate the disposition of Providence, his fellow-men, and 
finally himself, and from discontent will become unsound 

284 



in mind. Therefore, we should always remind youth 
that it is given to no man to find in this world all his 
wish and will. 

In a princely family the second son should also be 
made to notice that he stands in relation to the elder as 
a subject. If the second son holds more power than the 
eldest, dissensions in the family are inevitable. In the 
education of the younger people one must attend to this, 
that they acquire polite and dignified demeanor, and, be- 
fore everything, avoid rash and rude words ; yet not so 
exaggerated importance should be attached to a dignified 
carriage that a disregard of inferiors should arise ; other- 
wise an understanding of the real position is lost, and a 
compassionate feehng for the ills of dependents cannot 
exist. As often as an opportunity may occur one should 
explain to the children of sovereigns the use of certain 
things, out of what country they come, that they are of 
this or that province, what prince rules there, what for- 
tunes the ruHng house has passed through, and so forth. 
Also, with their own subjects one should try to make 
them acquainted in a similar way, naming, for example, a 
prominent man as descended from a famous general, re- 
lating that his family has been for centuries in the land, 
and on account of its great services has good fame. And 
such like things. In this way the youth will learn to 
estimate his subjects and, when a man, to take the cor- 
rect position toward them. Besides, every prince should 
be carefully trained in youth to all knightly arts, such as 
riding, drawing the bow, and fencing. 

Of course the descendant of a princely house needs not 
to go deeply into the studies of a scientific education. It 
is sufficient that he be made acquainted by professional 
men with the main features of the particular branches of 
science. But it is important and necessary that he be 
mformed of the deeds of great generals and faithful sub- 

285 



jects, and conversely of the fate of faithless officers who 
misled their superiors, brought mischief to their country, 
and finally ruined houses which had reigned for centuries. 
From such examples, detestable or worthy of imitation, 
he can draw the best lessons for his own acts. One 
ought not to judge one's own doing or not doing after 
one's own view of right and wrong, but ought to look at 
it in the mirror of the people's opinion. But you cannot 
keep this mirror like one made of metal, brilliant by 
polishing its outside ; you can only keep it clean and 
bright through the purity of your own heart. Evil con- 
duct makes the mirror lose its power of reflection. It 
remains then clear only when we listen to the judgment 
of our fellow-men upon our acts. If a ruler is pleased 
that one should make him mindful of his own faults, if 
he strives to put them aside and recompense those who 
have done him this service, then that mirror will always 
shine in brightest splendor, and the ruler will recognize 
in it his own image truly rendered; and, besides, he will 
also see which of his subjects think ill and which well of 
him, and what opinion of him the people have in general. 
If he wishes to hear only his praise from every mouth, 
his hypocritical surrounding will try to please him with 
suitable flattery, while his really loyal subjects will draw 
near to him only if he be willing to see his faults dis- 
covered and to receive admonition willingly. A ruler 
should always consider this, and never be contented with 
a surrounding perhaps clever, but over-flexible and com- 
plying, and wanting in deliberation and sincerity. If he 
mistake, then doors and towers are open to his hypocrit- 
ical inferiors, loyal outwardly but traitorous in heart. 

Ji Hiobu talked little and listened continually when- 
ever we were considering a matter, on which account he 
made a mediocre impression on outsiders. But as soon 
as he had acquired a clear view of the matter, he handled 

286 



it with a free mind. Quite especially was I pleased with 
him that face to face, and privately, he drew my attention 
to a possible mistake contemplated ; therefore I preferred 
mostly to consider everything alone with him first, and 
then only to discuss the matter publicly. 

Tastes and talent are so separate that in some peo- 
ple they seem to be in opposition. One man has the 
greatest liking for something which the other detests, and 
this one acquires with ease by virtue of his gifts what the 
other, notwithstanding dihgence and energy, cannot 
achieve. In the judgment of the worth of a man and of 
his faculties one ought not to proceed rashly and one- 
sidedly, as an example from the vegetable world teaches 
us ; each flower develops its full splendor in the season 
of its bloom, and each one possesses some particular 
beauty for which we treasure it. But there is a plant 
called the Dokudami ^ whose ugly exterior and evil smell 
make us avoid it and consider it useless ; and yet it ful- 
fils a very beneficent end. For instance, if you boil it 
quite long it becomes a remarkable remedy for lepers. 
So it is with men. Many a man is misunderstood and 
neglected, and yet each is gifted with certain faculties 
and can become an able and useful member of society if 
one understand how to employ him rightly ; to every one 
shall come a time wherein he fulfils his destiny. We 
usually hold as useless and tiresome things that others 
study with zeal, but which we do not like. Yet that is 
not reasonable, especially with a ruler. Until my maturer 
age I could not understand the game of Go,'-^ and could 
not see how a man could busy himself with such a use- 
less thing, which gave trouble but no pleasure ; therefore 
I thought all people stupid who gave themselves up to 
it. To-day, since I have thoroughly understood the 

1 Honthuynia cordata. 

2 May be described as a form of the game of checkers. 

287 



game, I find it very amusing, especially in rainy weather 
when I am not allowed to go out, and I play now eagerly 
with those whom I once derided. Through this I have 
come to guess that what has not been handed down from 
old times is somewhat useless. It is a great mistake to 
think that all that pleases us is good and what displeases 
us is bad, and that one's own taste is the only right one. 

It often happens that a child in its anger at hearing 
something unpleasant destroys the nearest available thing ; 
parents should not think that this is a consequence of 
worms, and therefore let it go unpunished ; such indul- 
gence works like poison on the character of the child. If 
really a disease be the cause of such excitement one 
ought to use right away the suitable medicine. He who 
in his youth has acquired such habits yields to them later 
when something displeases him ; then it will be seen what 
bad results unsubdued wilfulness can have. The object 
destroyed often matters little ; but the spoiled child, with 
time, vents his wrath mostly upon those around him, 
and often feels contented only when he has punished his 
victims with death. Parents can only prevent such ex- 
cesses in the future by keeping down from the beginning 
every stirring of wilfulness and impatience in their de- 
scendants. The most necessary and the most beautiful 
virtue of every man, especially of a ruler, is self-control. 
Whoever commands his own will with regard to any 
good thing will carry out the will of Providence, will live 
in harmony with his fellow-men, will not forfeit lands and 
castles that his ancestors left him, and will dispense 
rewards and punishments justly among the whole people, 
both among those further away and among those just 
about him. Under all circumstances he will keep a 
promise once given, and, if he serves a master, be ready 
to give his life ; he will not care first for himself and then 
only for others, but he will unselfishly strive for the wel- 

288 



fare of others, and early and late keep the rules of high 
behavior. He will not praise himself haughtily and 
depreciate others ; he will face his master without flat- 
tery or hypocrisy, openly and honestly ; and his parents 
also, as all other people. He will not strive to do every- 
thing after his own opinion, but will pay regard to tradi- 
tional forms in every act. 

In all five senses one can practise self-control : as to 
the eyes, in not allowing one's self to be deceived by 
beautiful dress, a handsome face, or by the exterior of 
anything. As to the sense of smell, by use one can get 
accustomed not only to pleasant odors, but to the most 
singular stenches. As to the sense of hearing, one can 
push on bravely through the noise and tumult of battle, 
reckless of the thunder of cannon or the hissing of arrows, 
to obtain the rich rewards of war. As to taste, one can 
avoid excess in eating and drinking, and not accustom 
the palate to luxurious meals ; finally, as to the sense 
of feeHng, one can overcome sensitiveness, and keep 
especially one's hands and feet entirely within one's 
control. Only he who through all his life thus tries to 
obtain control over himself shall upon the throne increase 
the glory of his house and establish peace in his country; 
if he be a subject, he shall rise and make his family 
happy and honored. But one must persevere in self- 
control, otherwise there can be no such results. If, for 
instance, some one has to practise self-control in ten 
cases to obtain a known result, and he is able to control 
himself nine times, but on the tenth his strength leaves 
him, then all his previous exertions were in vain. Many 
people who control themselves for a long time finally lose 
patience, thinking it impossible to protract their mastery. 
It might happen that some person might not really be 
strong enough, but in most cases I should think it a per- 
son's own fault if he forfeits in such a case his life, his 
19 289 



position, or his throne. Something Hke this is seen in 
shooting with the bow. If one has taken the right posi- 
tion and attitude of the body, if one has directed the 
weapon rightly and firmly and has the aim well in the 
eye, but at the moment of discharge the hand is un- 
steady, the shot goes wrong, and all this trouble was in 
vain. So also is self-command worthless and useless if 
it be not persevered in to the end. 

I know of only one man until now in our history whose 
self-control reached this degree of perfection, and that is 
Masashige Kusunoki.^ A man, on the contrary, who had 
no self-command and confessed that he had not himself 
in his own power was Katsuyori Takeda ; ^ hence his 
whole life was a tissue of failures, and he ended by losing 
his power and his life. Nobunaga Oda ^ was certainly a 
distinguished leader of armies, marked for his courage 
and generosity, and possessing in a high degree all facul- 
ties needed for a good ruler; and yet his lack of self- 
control brought on that he was murdered by his retainer 
Mitsuhide. Hideyoshi^ was generous, shrewd, valiant, 
and almost perfect in self-control ; hence he rose within 
twenty years from nothing to be the ruler of the entire 
Japanese Empire. But his generosity went beyond 
rightful limits. Generosity is a noble virtue, but it must 
fit the circumstances. Presents and gifts should not 
represent much over the value of the good deed whose 
reward they are meant to be; but Hideyoshi over-esti- 

1 Masashige (first half of fourteenth century), the type of unswerving 
loyalty to the throne. It is interesting to note lyeyasii's estimate of a hero 
who died defeated, and whose whole energy had been devoted to preventing 
the control of the Empire by the shoguns, of whom lyeyasu is the most 
complete type. 

2 Takeda, son of Takeda Shingen, prince of Kai, committed suicide at 
Tenmokuzan. The story of his father's eccentric life is too long to be given 
here. He was at times an ally, at times an enemy of lyeyasu. 

3 Nobunaga, lyeyasu's former leader. 

4 Hideyoshi, his other general and partner. 

290 



mated the merits of those to whom he owed his posi- 
tion and behaved with more than generosity — with 
prodigahty. 

The way to obtain domination and to keep it perma- 
nently is not through prodigahty, but through close 
economy. Inferiors often think that the master appears 
strange in comparison with other sovereigns who toss 
about presents ; but history teaches that just the wisest 
rulers have been accustomed to make few presents, and 
have avoided all luxury. 

A master desiring good and obedient servants should be 
ready with admonition at every mistake committed. My 
efforts since youth have been continually directed to this, 
wherefor my servants have stripped off all their faults. 
In any case one ought not to give up hope too soon, and 
at once decide that somebody is incorrigible. If in one's 
admonition the talk is only about the fault committed, 
the result will be that the person admonished acquires an 
unjust aversion to his master; and even servants who 
had served diligently before become careless and discon- 
tented ; the cause of this is to be sought in the manner 
of the admonition. If this is to have any result, the 
following method should be employed : summon the cul- 
prit to one's presence, and dismiss from the room every 
one else but one who is to play the part of the mediator. 
Then speak with milder words than usual about the former 
services of the subordinate, make some recognition of 
his zeal, both former and present ; in short, try to 
make him as happy as possible. Thereupon show him 
with due regard his faults, and explain to him that you 
did not expect them of such an attentive subject, and 
that you must hope that in the future you will need no 
more to blame; indeed, that all the more you reckon 
upon his former soKcitude and loyalty. Such an admo- 
nition brings any one in fault to yield, to recognize his 

291 



own defects, and to correct himself. The ruler of the 
house should make it his chief aim to make useful peo- 
ple of his servants, in which he can succeed only by re- 
senting every fault, even if committed by a person of the 
lowest position. It should even be difficult for the clev- 
erest servants to obtain the full approbation of the mas- 
ter. How much more should this be the case with the 
average person, concerning whom the master should con- 
sider it his task to remove imperfections as far as possible. 
He is to blame if oftener than is necessary faults come 
about. From the manner of those about him one can 
easily draw a conclusion as to the manner of the master. 
Therefore, he should keep a watchful eye upon the man- 
ner of his attendants, especially that those whom he loves 
and distinguishes serve as an example to the other in- 
feriors, whether they be good or bad. Further than this, 
it is very desirable that the master should be quite ac- 
quainted with the circumstances of his servants ; and that, 
on the contrary, these should get to know as little as 
possible about his affairs. 

It is not favorable to health that one should give one's 
self up entirely to indulgence in time of peace. If one 
has nothing to do habitually, many bad things usually 
come up. Therefore, for each moment from waking to 
going to sleep one should appoint a task, and live 
conscientiously from day to day according to this plan. 
Further, one should not eat only savory food, for one 
becomes tired of that in time. On ordinary days one 
should take as simple a meal as possible ; for it is enough, 
I believe, to eat two or three times a month something 
especially savory. 

For several years I repeat my prayers every day 
60,000 times. Many consider this exaggerated on the part 
of so old a man, and they advise me to diminish some- 
what the number. It would indeed be a relief for me 

292 



could I follow this advice ; but because I was born in times 
of war, and as a commander I have caused the death 
of many men, I should like to do penance in my prayers 
for my many sins, and hence I keep to my old habit. 
Beyond this, the quiet and idle life which I must now 
lead is hard to bear, because from my youth I never 
had an hour of rest, but was always overlad,en with work, 
and as I can no more attend to other business, so must I 
make work for myself in my prayers. I rise early every 
morning, and I go to bed in the evening not very early, 
in consequence of which I have a very good digestion, 
and believe that I should be thankful for this to my 
prayers. An old proverb says, " If one wishes to know 
the manner of life of a man, ask him if he have a regular 
time for rising and for going to sleep, and if he can or 
cannot be moderate in eating and drinking." That is 
also my way of looking at it. 

Courage is a virtue which every man should possess; but 
too much courage can easily become dangerous, as it se- 
duces us very often to desire obtaining everything by force ; 
and then things go ill with us generally. Rightly says the 
proverb : a hard thing is easily broken. Therefore one 
obtains better results through gentleness and generosity 
than by vehemence and recklessness. Advise your attend- 
ants in this manner that they may always have a com- 
posed demeanor ; and so teach your children that they 
always show^ due respect to every member of the family. 

Give this letter to Kuni, and impress upon him that he 
realize and lay to heart its contents. 

Finally, my best greetings to all. 

This 25th of February. 

N.B. — I beg you once more to pay attention to Kuni. 
If you bring him up according to my advice I shall have 
no reason for anxiety about his future. 

293 



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